The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1885-06-10
THE NEW YORK POST OFFICE.
A Glance Mt the Working of a Big Machine.

Along the Park.row side of the New Yorl
Post Office, ON level with the second floor
and carefully protected at either end, there
runs narrow little gallery, bare and cold
as prison corridor. Now and then an en-
ploye of the office fits along over its stone
floor or possibly visitor walks through it.
Standing in this gallery one looks down
upon the principal working room of the
largest and best-managed Post Office in the
United States. He is near enough to the
roof to note the great glass ceiling, ribbed
with iron, through which the sunlight filters,
and on which the rain falls with n muffled
sound or the snow lies heavily. He is not
too fnr from the floor below to be confused
by the scores of hurrying men, the glare of
dozens of electric lights, il the day be ct all
dark, and curious tumble of sounds, some
of which he has seldom or never heard be-
fore, and all of which seem to be hopelessly
sntangled, although striving valiantly to
extricate themselves.
A bell clangs somewhere, and the men
dash about like the bits of glass in kaleid
oscope. Fat and important-looking baskets,
loaded to the brim with letters and papers,
go whisking around at brealkneck speed,
turning corners with squeak and scrape
and rushing down narrow lanes as IL bent
on destruction and determined to have their
own way. Stout bags and thin bags; bags
that are old and humble bags that are new
and vain bags on crutches, so to speak,
and bags that look as If they could almost
60 scurrying over the world alone; bags
that have seen better days; bags that will
see worse; -cotta-colored bags, buff
colored bags, subdued buff colored bags,
ash-colored bags, black bags, bags of colors
which are not named and never will be,
bags OF every kind, shade, character, and
shape-all these are running in and out,
opening themselves on great tables, gaspinp
as flattened out and empty bags ought to
gasp, and then hiding themselves away in
the basement with thousands OF their kind
until called into use again, when they will
go almost to the uttermost ends of the earth
at the rate of 5000 day.
Piles and bales of letters grow up on the
tables like mushrooms and melt away like
spring food when the ice goes out. There
are ell kinds of letters for all sorts of peo-
pie in all parts of the world. There are let
tiers with inscriptions as easy to read as
these words, and letters with inscriptions
that almost cause the five patient gentlemen
who are called directory searchers," and
who sit in little cage directly under the
gallery, to wish they had never been born
or that the writer's hadn't. There are let
ters representing millions, and letters the
postage on which was hard to get. There
are letters with o row of stamps most of the
way across the top, and letters with a sim
gle little stamp set diagonally across the
corner. There are letters upon which the
address Is so clear that child may read It,
and letters addressed to persons yet unborn
in streets not yet laid out and at numbers
which are far out in either the North or
East River. And there are letters which
people will be glad to get, and letters which
will cause the receivers more sorrow than 2
cents ought to carry