The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, October 2, 1904, Page 6

| i =~ i i { | THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. By JEROME Co by the Central News and Press Exchange. 5 1€ that the Anglo-Saxon does better “French or Turk or Rooshian,” to which add ( n or the Belgian. When the Anglo-American official he appoints more or less a servant: chman and the others put a man in gold- another to their long list of masters. intauces you can discover American or with the continental official, it is worth vany him, the first time he goes out to post a add an s toward that postoffice a breezy, self- ne up by pride of race. While mount- of : getting this letter off his Jobson and going on to Durand’s for he had got the whole day before him. he attempts to push open - the door. It looks about him and discovers that it is the ¢ not of ingress. It does not seem to him worth & T ng the twenty steps 1d climbing another y. as he is concerned he is willing to pull the door ¢ f But a stern official bars his way and gl preper entrance. “Oh, bother,” he says, ain, and up the other flight. “I shall not n s over his shoulder, “you can wait for o ut if you know vour way about, yvou follow him seats within and yo ve a newspaper in your will pass pleasanter. Inside he looks round, serman postoffice. g 1y speakir is about the size i and. It ¢ not - oce to the German :-and the same employe could sell a penny 1 the next moment sufficiently hitch off »w train of thot ht and sell a postal order to else. would be too r considers ~ the German cracy Human adaptability has its limits. Let the stamp * spick to his stamps, the dispenser of postal orders save or postal orders. Some twenty different. windows troubled friend, e bearing its own peculiar with number to hi that the posting of the letters is not a e German postoffice desires to encourage. Would he ot 1 dog license instead, is what one window suggests to 1 never mind that letter of yours; come and talk about pleads another. At last he thinks he has found the nizes. He the word “Registration” he distinctly rec kes any notice of him. The foreign official is a is saddened by a public altvays wanting some- You read it in his face wherever you go. The man who s vou tickets for the theater! He is eating sandwiches when wock at his window. He turns to his companion: “Good ’ vou can see him say, “Here’s another of ’em. If there is morning there have been a all of 'em want to come see 1 listen now ; bet you anything he's going to bother kets. - Really, it gets on my nerves sometimes.” At the station it is the same. “Another man who wants to Antwerp! Don't seem to care for rest, these people; flying ., flving there; what's the It is the absurd craze been one man worrying me t dred. Always the same story; sense of it part of the public for letter-writing: it is spoiling the temper of the continental postoffice official. He does his best to discourage it: “Look at them,” he says to his assistant. The thoughtf continental Government is careful to provide every official with another official to talk to, lest by sheer force of ennui he might be reduced to taking interest in work. “Twenty of 'em, all in a row; of ‘em been for the iarter of an hour.” “Let 'em wait another of an advises the assistant; “perhaps they'll go away.” “My fellow,” he answers, “do you think I haven’t tried that? There’s simply no getting rid Qf ’em; and it's always the same cry, ‘Stamps! stamps! stamps!” Pon my word, I think they live on stamps, some of 'em.” “Well, let "em have their stamps,” sug- gests the assistant with a burst of inspiration, “perhaps it' will et rid of 'em.” “What's the use,” wearily the older man re- plies; “there’ll only come a fresh crowd when those are gone.” “Oh, well,” argues the other, “that will be a change, anyhow. I'm tired of looking at this lot.” I put it to a German postoffice clerk once; a man I had been boring for months. I said: “You think I write these letters—these short stories, these three-act plays on purpose to annoy you. Do let me try and get the idea out of your head. Personally, I hate work—hate it as much as you do. This is a pleasant little town of yours! given a free choice, T could spend the whole day mooning round it, never put- ting pen to paper. But what am I to do? 1 have a wife and children. You know what it is yourself; they clamor for food, boots, all sorts of things. I have to prepare these little packets for sale and bring them to you to send off. You see, you are here. If you were not here, if there were no postoffice in this town, maybe I'd have to train pigeons or cork the thing up in a bottle, fling it into the river and trust to luck and the gulf stream. But you being here and ’calling yourself a postoffice—well, it's a temptation to a fellow.” I think it did good. Anyhow, after that he used to grin when I opened the door, instead of greeting me as formerly with a face the picture of despair. But to return to our inexperienced friend. At last the wicket is suddenly opened. A peremptory official demands of him “name and address.” Not expecting the ques- tion, he is a little doubtful of his address and has to correct him- self once or twice. The official s him suspiciously. “Name of mother ?” continues the official. “Name of what?” “Mother!” re- peats the official; “had a mother of some sort, I suppose?” He is a man who loved his mother sincerely while she lived, but she has been dead these twenty years, and for the life of him he can- not recollect her name. He thinks it was Margaret Henrietta, but is not at all sure. Besides, what on earth has his mother got to do with this registered letter that he wants to sent to his partner in New York. “When did it die?” asks the official. “When did what die? Mother?” “No, no, the child.” “What child?” The indignation of the official is almost picturesque. “All I want to do,” explains your friend, “is to register a letter—" “A what?” “This letter I want—" The window is slammed in his face. When ten minutes later he does reach the right wicket—the bu- reau for the registration of letters and not the bureau for the registration of infantile deaths—it is pointed out to him that the his there quarter some GOLD BRAID AND [TS EFFECT«S K JEROME letter either is sealed or that it is not sealed. T have never been able yet to solve this problem. If your letter is sealed it then appears that it ought not to have been sealed. If on the other hand you have omitted to seal it, that is your fault. In either case, the letter cannot go as it is. The continental official brings up the public on the principle of the nurse who sent the eldest girl to see what Tommy was doing and tell him he mustn’t. Your friend having wasted half an hour and mislaid his temper for the day, decides to heave this thing over and talk to the hotel porter about it. Next to the Burgomaster, the hotel porter is the most influential man in the continental town; maybe because he can swear in seven different languages. But even hejs not omnipo- tent. Three of us, on the point of starting for a walking. tour through ‘the Tyrol, once sent on our luggage by post from Con- stance to Innsbruck. Our idea was that, reaching Innsbruck in the height of the season, after a week’s tramp on two flannel shirts and a change of socks, we should be glad to get into fresh clothes before showing ourselves in civilized society. Our bags were waiting for us in the postoffice; we could see them through the grating. But some informality—I have never been able to understand what it was—had occurred at Constance. The sus- picions of the Swiss postal authorities had been aroused, and spe- cial instructions had been sent that the bags were to be delivered up only to their rightful owners. It sounds sensible enough. No- body wants his bag delivered up to any one but the proper owner. But it had not been explained to the authorities at Innsbruck how they were to know the proper owners. Three wretched looking creatures crawled into the postoffice and said they wanted those three bags—*those bags, there in the corner,” which were nice, clean, respectable looking bags; the sort of bags that any one might want. One of them produced a bit of paper, it is true, which he said had been given to him as a receipt by the postoffice people at Constance. But in the lonely passes of the Tyrol one man, set upon by three, might easily be robbed of his papers and his body thrown over a-precipice. The chief clerk shook his head; he was a kindly looking man; but he had had his instructions to be careful and he intended to be careful. He would like us to return accompanied by some one who coul identify us. The hotel porter occurred to us as a matter of course. Keeping to the back streets we returned to the hotel and fished WE MIGHT COME EACH DAY AND CRESS 1N THE (FPOST OFFICE. him out of his box. - “I am Mr. J,” T said; “this is my friend, Mr. B and this is Mr. S.” The porter bowed and said he was de- lighted. “I want you to comg with us to the postoffice,” I ex- plained, “and identify us.” They asked him how long he had known us. He threw up his hands with an eloquent gesture; memory refused to travel back such distance. It appeared there was never a time when he had not known us. We had been boys together. Did he know any- body else who knew us? The question appeared to him almost y insulting. Everybody in Innsbruck knew us, honored us, respected us—everybody, that is, except a few postoffice officials, people quite out of society. Would he kindly bring along, say one undoubtedly respectable citizen who could vouch for our identity. The request caused him to forget us and our troubles. The argu- ment became a personal quarrel between the porter and the clerk. If he, the porter, was not a respectable citizen of Innsbruck, where was such to pe found? Both gentlemen became excited, and the discussion passed beyond my understanding. But I gatl ered dimly, from what the clerk said, that ill-natured remarks relative to the porter’s grandfather and a missing cow had never yet been satisfactorily replied to; and from observations made by the porter, that stories were in circulation about the clerk’s aunt and a sergeant of artillery that should suggest to a discreet nephew of the lady the inadvisability of talking about other peo- ple’s grandfathers. Our sympathies were naturally with the porter; he was our man, but he did not seem to be advancing our cause much. We left them quarreling and persuaded the head waiter that evening to turn out the gas at our end of table d’hote. The next morning we returned to the postoffice by our- selves. The clerk proved a reasonable man when treated in a friendly spirit. He was a bit of a climber himself. He admitted the possibility of our being the rightful owners. His instructions were only not to deliver up the bags, and he, himself, suggested a way out of the difficulty. We might come each day and dress in the , stoffice, behind the screen. It was an awkward arrange- ment, even although the clerk allowed us the use of the back door. And occasionally, in spite of the utmost care, bits of us would show outside the screen. But for a couple of days, until the British Consul returned from Salzburg, the postoffice had to be our dressing-room. The continental official, I am inclined to think, errs on the side of prudence.