Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-12-09
By Frank H. Sweet

n
are keen at deciPhering
these unntentional cryp-
tograms. They must go to the " blind reader.
Poor chirography is in itself the east of the
experts troubles. He has little to think about
until two essential elements of three are omit
ted, and the rest spelled in manner beyond
the dreams of the widest "fonetik." The
general causes
I. Foreign ignorance of American geography
and the English language.
2. False or defective information about the
particular address intended with more or less
carelessness.
g. Whims and oddities of cranks and semi
cranks.
of wit and humor
Of all the queer addresses in the collection,
those which belong to the first of these classes
are the most interesting and amusing; those OF
the last and would be funny are the least so:
Several inventors of ciphers have experlmented
on the post Office by using their own inventions
to address envelops to themselves, with the
notifying result that the envelops SO adj
dressed infallibly reached their destination in
course of time To understand why the post
office officials should trouble themselves to
decipher these pueriities, one must remember
that the postal service has its esprit de corps,
and wholesome rivalry between the New Y ork
post office and the Dead Letter Office at Wash
ington forces the activity of both far beyond
the point where strict obligation might fairly
be supposed to end.
Towns Named Alike
THE largest number of blind addresses are
L the result of the close similarity between
| the names of post offices in the same State. New
| Jersey, for instance, has not only a Morrstown,
| but Mauricetown and a Moorestown And
here is.an astonishing list of what may be called
| pairs of twin names in Pennsylvania: Bella and
| Bala, Coldcreek and Coles Creek, Dilliner and
| Dillinger Drifton and Drifting, Denmore and
Dunmore Hamilton and Hamlinton, Roland
and Rowland. Mistakes in addressing are
inevitable when such names as these are given
| by word of mouth, friends in parting beg
each other to " be sure to let me hear from
| you" This class now and then furnishes
| some amusement, as for instance where the
name of Duchess Junction, New York, appears
| as =" Dutch Johnson, Colts Neck masque
rades as Cold Snake" Recently the New
York sorters have been puzzled by these three:
| Liquid, Lobster Bay" and North Dutch
| town." respectively intended for Lakewood,
| Oyster Bay, and Germantown.
The apparatus for dealing with this class of
difficulties consists chiefly of a remarkably
large outfit of books of reference-directores of
cities gazetteers, directories of every trade and
occupation, the army list, the navy list, the
| register of lighthouses, registers of persons
| specially interested in various artistic and SCI
entifc pursuits, and, not least the social regis
| ter. 1t needs trained Judgment almost
equal to an instinct in its effect, to guess in
| which of these books name is most likely to be
found 1t may have been easy, for instance, to
decide on general appearance that " Miss Mary
Murphy, America" to whom an unstamped en-
velop is addressed, need not be looked for in
the social register, but many cases require a
much closer consideration of all the details.
Difficulty With Foreigners
THE cream of the collection, regarding it as
museum of epistolary curosities, is in the