. Thirty years in Washington; or, Life and scenes in our national capital. Portraying the wonderfuloperations in all the great departments, and describing every important function of our national go vernment ... With sketches of the presidents and their wives ... from Washington's to Roosevelt's administration . QueerRequests — 60,000 Missent Photographs Every Year — A Huge Bookof Photographs—Identifying the Faces of Loved Ones — Tear-Blinded Mothers — The Dead-Letter Museum — Odd Things Foundin the Mails—Snakes and Horned Toads — The Lost Ring and ItsSingular Recovery — A Baby Elephant — Toke
. Thirty years in Washington; or, Life and scenes in our national capital. Portraying the wonderfuloperations in all the great departments, and describing every important function of our national go vernment ... With sketches of the presidents and their wives ... from Washington's to Roosevelt's administration . QueerRequests — 60,000 Missent Photographs Every Year — A Huge Bookof Photographs—Identifying the Faces of Loved Ones — Tear-Blinded Mothers — The Dead-Letter Museum — Odd Things Foundin the Mails—Snakes and Horned Toads — The Lost Ring and ItsSingular Recovery — A Baby Elephant — Tokens of Love and Re-membrance— Dead Letter Auction Sales. VERY year hundreds of thousands of misdirectedletters, or letters having no address at all, or soillegibly written as to be undecipherable exceptby an expert, or letters that are unclaimed, passthrough the hands of postal clerks. Some of thesesuperscriptions are so bad that it is a wonder howany of them ever reach their destination. Addressesscrawled in this fashion are known to the postal fra-ternity as stickers ; and if they are absolutely unread-able even to intelligent and experienced post-office clerksthey are called nixies. When expert clerks in the largestpost-offices in the United States are unable to decipher the (330). 331 address, they are sent to the Dead-Letter Office at Washing-ton as a last resort. Thus in this and other ways every yearnearly 8,000,000 pieces of mail matter are received at thisPost-Office morgue, though only a small portion of themprove to be absolutely dead, for in the hands of the Dead-Letter Office experts many apparently hopeless cases arebrought to life and delivered to their owners. The headquarters of the Dead-Letter Office on the thirdfloor of the department building afford adequate facilitiesfor the ever-growing requirements of this interesting branchof government work ; for while Uncle Sams people gener-ally write better than they once could, they seem to be a
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublisherhartf, bookyear1901
