New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1897-11-17
LETTERS STOPPED IN TIME.

People Saved by Postmasters From the
Result Of Hasty Action.
y The tears were Streaming from her.
eyes like spray from the Yerkes foun.
tain, = said a clerk in the inquiry di-,
vision Of the postoffce, laughing at the
memory Of the stout, forid woman who
rushed in one hot afternoon with the
plaintive wall: Stop my letter. Give
me my letter to the old countryi'
That letter, the man went On,
was dropped somewhere within the
city limits and was mixed in with some.
2,O0O, 900 other letters, yet she wanted
us to get it for her quick seemed to
think that would bounce out Of my
chair like a rubber ball out Of a tennis
racket, snatch up that particular epis-
tie and come running back breathless
and hand it to her. Now, the facts are
that the government does not permit
the stopping Of a letter that has left the
writer's hands unless it is important
that it should be DONE It makes an
enormous amount Of extra work. Here
is a blank that must be filled out, stat
ing the box in which the letter was
dropped, the time, the address and the
reason why the request for the recovery
is made That reason sometimes dis
closes some very interesting and roman
tic facts; but, Of course, most of the
letters are stopped for the business
houses about town. When we asked the
red faced Niobe what her reason was,
she boohooed, Me an my man had
some troubles an wrote to my fader
for moneys to 60 home, but my man
an me have made up, an would not
have that letter go for t'ousand dol
lar We got that letter for her.
"There was another, a young woman
who rushed in here during the opera
season, and when she had caught little
breath she said she wanted letter she
had addressed to Peoria, Ills. There
were some IS opera tickets in it that she.
wanted to use that night. She had had
a letter written to her family, and,
thinking there might be a postscript to
add, had not sealed it. She bought her
seats to 'Tannhauser' and left the win
dow with her purse, her letter and her
tickets in her hand. The open envelope
was SO inviting a place for the tickets
that she thought she would carry them
there, but just as soon as she saw let
ter box it was like a red rag to bull
She sealed the envelope and posted it,
tickets and all, and it was hours before
she remembered what she had done and
then came down to us for help We got
her tickets too ..,.
"Young women who have 'reconsid-
ered' proposal or who regret q hasty
note, like the men, blushingly confde
their troubles to us, and we have pre-
vented more than one broken heart.
Sometimes the letters have left our
hands and we have to telegraph to catch
them, which is done at the persons ex-
pense. We have more than once cabled
to Berlin and st. Petersburg to head off
a billet doux or some request from an
impatient and petulant son for check.
A scion of a noble German house came
in here to implore us to prevent the de-
livery Of demand for money, written,
I fancy, in tone that, in the light of
recent remittances, would endanger his
inheritance. There is some mighty in
teresting reading among the blanks re-
questing letters stopped, all Of which
are sent on to Washington. ''-Chicago
Inter Ocean. ..- =.