The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1898-01-20
"LOST" MAIL PACKAGES,
1t In Very Easy for People to he Mis-
taken.

lOAcus
The Sioux City post office has just had
a striking instance of how easy it is for
people to be mistaken regarding mat
ters concerning which they feel very
confident. The attaches of the local
Office, and of the office of the fourth as
sistant postmaster-genera at Washing
ton, and of the Office of the chief in
spector at Chicago, and woman in
this city have been very much exer-
cised as to the whereabouts of certain
package which had failed to reach its
destination. A postal detective was put
to work to trace the matter, and the
officials and the woman wondered how
the property could have been SO COM
pletely lost in the mails. After the au-
thorities in Sioux City and Washing
ton and Chicago had exhausted all the
ingenuity they could muster in tracing
it, and had about concluded that they
had been at work upon an unfathom-
able mystery, it developed that the
sender of the package hadn't put it
in the post Office at all, but had sent
it by express, and that the express peo-
pie had no means of finding out the
residence of the consignee, who had
failed to call because the consignor
had declared the package would arrive
by mail. The woman was positively
sure that she had deposited it in the
post Office; and she detailed some of
the incidents and circumstances. She
declared she even remembered that she
had difficulty in pushing the package
through the slot when she mailed it,
And still the fact is, she hadn't mailed
it at all. All of which goes to show
that blunders regarding mail matter
may sometimes occur outside the post
office.
In speaking of this circumstance
Postmaster Nash said: "Just after
took charge of the office had an ex-
perience somewhat similar to this, so
far as the certainty of the person was
concerned regarding specification of
details which never happened. A wom-
an came to me and said that she had
mailed a draft to her daughter in
certain town in Minnesota, and that it
had not been received. She described
how she had bought the draft at the
bank, and had put it in the envelope
right there, and how she had put the
stamp on it, and how she remembered
particularly that when she addressed it
the pen scratched and spluttered, but
that she had to use the envelope never
theless, because she didn't have another
with her, and how she mailed the let
ter at box on Fourth street corner.
Well, we reported it, and had a great
time striving to trace the missing let
ter, but couldn't find out single thing
about it. In course of time we got
remittance from the dead letter office
inclosing an envelope and its contents
which had been mailed here, and there
wasn't single scratch of pen on the
envelope, nor was there anything in the
letter from which we could tell bv
whom it had been sent, or for whom
1t was intended. The signature was
Mother, and the address was NV Dear
Daughter and there are great many
people hereabouts to whom that might
apply. But the letter contained a $50
draft, and this led us to recall the in
cident of the woman who had lost one
OF that amount. l sent her a note to
call at the Office, and when she was con-
fronted with the evidence that the non
arrival of her letter was due entirely
to her own carelessness she had as
much difficulty as the rest of us in un-
derstanding how it could be that she
had remembered SO distinctly about the
scratching and spluttering of that pen
on the envelope when it was evident
that the envelope had never known
pen.
"And, by the way, this practice of ad-
dressing and signing letters without
using any name that will help the dead
letter office to reach the parties inter-
ested therein causes great deal OF
trouble and delay in delivery of social
and personal letters. Business letters
usually are addressed in full at the
beginning and are signed in full at the
end, and thus if there is any error in
vi tuC CutclOpS lHcy
get to the proper parties through the
dead letter office without being sent
back to the writer. 1t is worth while
for people to indicate in their letters
such facts as would enable the dead
letter office to understand something
about those who are connected with the
correspondence."-Sioux City Journal.
Are the Himalayas Growings
1t has been suggested that the Hima-
laya mountains, which are known to
have increased in height many thou
sands OF feet since the Eocene period,
are still slowly growing, and, according
to this view, the great earthquake in
India on June ~, which is said to have
affected an area larger than that shaken
by the famous Lisbon earthquake in
ITS, may have been a result of the
gradual uplifting of the mountains. A
careful investigation of the circum-
stances of this earthquake is being
made by the Indian geological survey.
Youths Companion.
Earth Moves Faster in Winter.
It is an interesting fact that the earth
d0eS MT travel NJ Tho capoa ro+a - ~