Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-04-15

Former Auditor for the post-Office Department
these three million pieces were restored to the
Over fifty thousand sealed letters without
any address turned n besides nearly seventy
thousand packages and parcels. There sixty
eating fifty-three thousand dollars, and sixty-four
thousand that contained drafts, checks, money
orders and notes of face value of two million dollars
The fatal disorders which struggle for Suprem-
acy in furnishing work for the undertakers at the
Dead-Letter Office may be classified under two
heads: carelessness and ignorance In the more
excusabe cases of fatal ignorance may place
the pathetic efforts of foreigners to compass the
mysteries of our geographic names.
AT the Chicago post-ofhce record is kept of the
mail addresses, At last accounts three hundred
and forty-seven varieties had been tabulated
Among the less intricate of these were Zizazo,
Jagjago, Hipaho Jajio and Chahicho
Work for Blind Readers
A FEW examples of difficult addresses on foreign
letters deciphered by the blind readers are
sirianostrit louisville Sarah Ann Street Temp
kinsville); Merryone " (Matteawan, New York; :;
Istochinchistomrno East Kingston, New York;;
Lost Soldier" was properly delivered at Lost
Cabin, Rawlins County, Wyoming A correspondent
in Tennessee addressed friend in Texas at Calf
CITY," and the letter was delivered through the
agency of the Dead-Letter Office at Wolfe City.
A writer in Minneapolis addressed a Catholic divine
at Greatbrook, Conn.," but there is such
Waterbury, Connecticut
As the prime object of writing a letter is to get
1t to its destination and have read by the person
to whom it is written it would seem natural that
little thought should be given to the one thing
necessary to that end namely, putting the proper
address upon it Every day thousands of letters
mailed, conveying important messages and even
containing enclosures OF large value, which COM
plete in every respect except that their addresses
incomplete or illegible confused Many letters
dropped into the mails without any address
Il
State when they meant for town of the
same name in another some mailed with
a street address, but with town; some with
a town, but without State, and up and
down the gamut of possible deficiencies. Post
office employees, who endowed with extra
ordinary patience well unusual intelligence,
consult directories and gazetteers and contrive
by lucky guesses to save considerable part
of this iotsam and etsam of the mails from the
Dead-Letter Office; but much of 1t gets there, and
where any clue is afforded the sender returned
to him. usually after has ceased to have any value.
Terrors of Chinese phonetics
THIS feature of exerting every possible effort to
deliver unclaimed mail before sending it to the
Dead-Letter Office is something original with the
American postal system. Great persistence is shown
in the try" line. A letter came to this country
from Russia, bearing the simple address, Fl
Simon America" and the postal authorities de-
livered it to the man for whom it was intended. 1t
travelled five thousand three hundred and seventy
miles to reach the New York post-office, but no F.
Simon was known there. Then the letter went to
Washington, and then to North Dakota where there
many Firms. Some out there had heard of
F. Simon in Jamestown, New York, and sent it
east again, and F. P Simon of Jamestown said that
it his
Some of the most difficult of the blind addresses
on letters which perplex the post-ofice clerks
those which appear the correspondence of the
enterprising citizens of the Flowery Kingdom who
sojourn among us When a Chinaman in New York
writes to a friend in Kalamazoo, he places the
address, he understands it, plainly written in
orthodox national hieroglyphics, in the upper left
hand corner, and takes it to some fellow countrynan
Srrosed he sl-illad in