THE DEPOSIT-WINDOWS.—These are surrounded by a motley crew; letters are dropped in hastily, some carefully by those who write in doubt and seem to hesitate the sending until the last moment. Why? Ah! reader, there is a mystery in all things: here mystery becomes secrecy. There you see an old lady carefully depositing a letter: she glances down the opening, takes one last look, and, sighing, silently moves away. What are the contents of that letter? It is her secret.
Pass on to the newspaper—not window; for newspapers are a wholesale article: singly they are mere letters; in bulk they are _legion_. You must go to a door, and there you will see bags piled Olympus high: these are opened and distributed into their respective pouches to go to all parts of the habitable world; for newspapers now are, like letters, “the world’s correspondents.” The inside of the office is now wide awake, the world outside is in arms and “eager for the fray.” Millions of letters go and come, millions of hearts are made glad by a mere stroke of the pen, which passes lightning-like through this postal medium, millions of hearts are alike made sad, and mourn and sob over the one line that brings news of sickness and of death.
The post-office in many points of view presents the appearance of a besieged fort. The chief clerk is at his post: he stands on a platform somewhat elevated above the line of the main floor; his eye glances along the line of clerks, some of whom are at the (port-holes) delivery-windows, awaiting the outward attack. The assault commences, the windows are assailed. Loud voices are heard, one above the rest shouts 2400: this is answered by an immediate discharge from within, which silences battery 2400. These attacks continue along the “box line” until the demand for surrender on the one side is answered by a furious discharge of _epistolary_ ammunition on the other. Both parties retire satisfied with the result. The victory, however, is always on the side of the post-office: the effect of the fire from their port-holes is felt when all within its lines are quiet. The wheels of the department uninjured move on. Let us take a glance through yonder opening. We are on the outside, looking into the interior of this postal fortress. Hundreds of active business-men are moving about in their shirt-sleeves, looking fierce and desperate: they are engaged in a great struggle,—a _struggle with time_. Some are dragging along the vast extent of flooring large leather pouches, others huge canvas bags: it seems, as you gaze, that they are the bodies of the dead and wounded, the result of the recent attack. Not so; they are mail-bags. See how furiously one is thrown down: it is seized upon as if a victim to be sacrificed. “Brass lock,” yells one. “Iron,” screams another. Brass or iron, they are quickly unlocked, and in an instant their contents are scattered like chaff, and away they go to the four quarters of the globe as fast as busy hands, wind, tide, and steam can take them.