Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1886 — A Postmistress Who Reads the Mail. [ARTICLE]

A Postmistress Who Reads the Mail.

A gentleman who spent a rammer ' traveling in the Rocky Mountains gives the following account of a little grayhaired old-lady he found living alone in a log-cabin of two rooms far up the slope of a most desolate mountain. The cabin was a mile from any other house, and the nearest town was ten miles distant. On the shelves back of a little pine counter in a corner of the room -were cans of tonjatoes, peas, wnduorn, a few bars of soap, boxes of matches find cans of condensed milk. “I keep a little grocery store, and thread and needles and pins and such things, bein’s I’m postmistress, ” said the old lady, in the cheeriest of voices. “Postmistress?” queried the traveler. “Oh, yes,” was the reply. • “Where are the letters and the office?” s “Here,” as she smillingly took a ci-gar-box down from a shelf and, opening it, showed the man a dozen or more letters bearing evidence of having been handled many times. “The mail comes two times a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays; but most of the boys come ’round Saturdays. ” “The boys?” asked the stranger. “Yes; the prospectors and miners scattered all round over the hills. There’s a good many of ’em, but they don’t write much, nor get many letters. Still, the postoffice is comp’ny for me. It brings all the boys to see me once in a while. Are, you going up by the Lone Star Mine?” “No, I think not,” said the traveler. “No? Well, if you was, there’s a postal here for Jack Downing. It says on it that he is to come..to Denver right off, and I'd like to send it to him as soon as I can. I always read the postals. The boys don’t care, and I get real lonesome sometimes.” Just then a miner came along and asked: “Is Bill Heffer’s Weekly Republican come yet from Denver?” “Yes,” was the reply; “but you can tell Bill I’ll send it up to-morrer by the stage-driver; I ain’t done readin’ it myself yet. Bill won’t care; he never reads it until Sunday, nohow. If you see Silas Sharpe you tell him that there’s a postal here from his wife, and the baby’s got the whoopin’ cough, but it ain’t a whoopin’ yet, an’ his wife don’t think it’ll have it hard. ” “Any letters for any of the boys up our way?” “No; but there’s one here for somebody named J. B. Ryder. Know any such man?” “No.” “Neither do L It’s a thin envelope, and I can see, by holdin’ it up to? the light, that it’s signed ‘Your own Sarah,’ so I guess he’s married, or about to be. If he don’t come round soon, I dun’o but I’ll open it and get the address and send it back to “his own Sarah,” and tell her he ain’t here. ” When the man had gone the old lady said to the traveler: “Yes the postoffice is a sight of comp’ny, speshly when there’s lots o’ papers and postals cornin’ and goin’. Then sometines I write and read letters for some that can’t write. Now, here’s a letter for John Brice just come in. He ought to have it right off. ” “But been opened,” said the traveler. ” “Oh, la yes! I opened it myself. I wrote the letter it’s in answer to, and I’ll have to read this to John Brice, anyhow. He can’t read writin’, and I felt real anxious to know if his letter got to his wife; it had a $lO bill in it. Here comes Bob Haight. Poor fellow! I declare if I was* alone I’d shut up the postoffice and hide some place; for it just makes my heart ache to tell that poor creeter that they ain’t no letter yit for ’im. He’s been a cornin’ here for weeks lookin’ for a letter from home, and none comes. I’m mighty afraid there’s trouble there. Well, well, I’ll just have to tell him they ain’t no letter, and then chirk him up bggtl can. Poor loutA’sCom panion.