A letter sent free costs the sender a penny; to receive a letter not pre-paid, is to expend double the amount. In the degree of attention shown to this little fact, it is not impossible to find a test of the principles of mankind--of the whole corresponding portion of creation at least.
The last post-office returns show, that there are upon an average 7654 persons--monsters in the human form, we should rather say--in this metropolis alone, who walk about day by day dropping stampless epistles into ravenous letter-boxes, from sheer misanthropy--hatred of their fellow-creatures; which feeling they are pleased to call forgetfulness, stamplessness, or copperlessness, as convenience may dictate.
Never become enraged when you receive a missive from one of them--never storm when you pay double--lest you should chance to justify where you mean to condemn.
At unpaid letters look not blue, Nor call your correspondent scamp; For if you storm, he proves that you Received his letter--_with_ "a stamp!"
Reflect seriously upon the character of such a correspondent. The man whose letters are not pre-paid may be thus denounced:--
He is selfish, because he would rather you should pay twice, than that he should pay once.
He would rather inflict an injury on his friend, than act fairly himself.
He is disloyal, because he ought to grace his letter with the head of his Queen, and he declines doing so.
He prefers seeing his brother's _two_ pockets picked, to having a hand thrust into one of his own.
He is an old fool, who wants to be thought young, and affects carelessness, because it is a youthful fault.
Rather than take a bottle of wine out of his own cellar, he would drink a couple at his neighbour's expense.
Sooner than experience a stamp on his toe, he would see his old father's gouty feet trampled on.
He is ready to discharge a double-barrelled gun at anybody, to escape a single shot at himself.
He would ride his friend's horse fifty miles, to save his own from a journey of five-and-twenty.
To avoid an easy leap from the first-floor window, he would doom his nearest connexion to jump from the roof.
Rather than submit to the privation of half a meal, he would subject any human being to the misery of being dinnerless.