At North Germantown, N. Y., they have a dog, "Nero" (the gentlest of collies, however). There are six "catch" mails at this point, and six times a day "Nero" goes down to the track, looks gravely in the direction of the train, jumps up and down excitedly as soon as it appears, and when the pouch is thrown out catches it. Nothing can induce him, however, to perform this valuable service on a Sunday.

And so it goes, the sweet mixed in with the bitter. Many a postal clerk stands in the doorway of his car as the train pulls out, and waves his hand to a group of fond ones who signal him Godspeed; and he cheerfully admits to his fellow, with a drop of moisture in his eye, that they always see him off that way, and that he shouldn't feel altogether right if they didn't. Perhaps a money package is missing. The clerk who receives it does not know where it is, and is not responsible in any way for its disappearance, but there is no satisfactory explanation, and the man must go. And with the rush and hurly-burly of railroad travel, of labor that seems never to release its weight, it is not strange that now and then a man becomes confused.

"I was allowed to make a trip alone," an Eastern clerk once wrote. "It seemed as if the moment the train started my senses left me. I was wild. Just before the train pulled out a man came up to the door and threw about fifty letters over the floor. I had to get down on my hands and knees and pick up those letters. I got my hands full of splinters. After cancelling these, with about three hundred more letters, and distributing them, I opened the pouches. Then the trouble began. I put off the mail for the first station at a water-tank five miles before reaching the station. I kept putting off mail just one station ahead, and when I reached the last station I had no mail to put off. I heard from that trip. Every postmaster on the line reported me to the superintendent."

It is this which causes the probationers to relent and go back to their former duties. A Muncie man was assigned, not long ago, to the Chicago & Cincinnati R. P. O. He never finished his first trip. He went half way, and bought a ticket home as a plain passenger. He was much annoyed by the questions of his friends, and had the following card printed to show to people:

Question. What are you doing here?

Answer. Have quit the mail service.

Question. Didn't you like it?

Answer. No.

Question. Was the work hard?

Answer. Yes.

Question. What was it?

Answer. Lifting and unlocking two hundred pound pouches, shaking out contents, arranging same, removing pouches, locking same, carrying same away, jumping on and stamping on mail matter, rearranging sacks, then going over same work, continuing same seventeen hours, without rest, with trains flying round curves and slinging you against everything that is not slung against you.

But the actual dangers to be met, the bravery required to be shown, these are the test and honor of the railway postal clerk. Over and over again, as Mr. James has written, and notwithstanding severe injuries received by the clerks, the scattered mail matter has been collected and transferred to another train or to the nearest post office. Several times trains in the West were held up by robbers, who, after sacking the express car, visited the postal car, introducing themselves with pistol shots. One clerk was seriously wounded in the shoulder. An instance of self-possession reported in Arkansas, was where the robbers, before visiting the postal car, had secured $10,000 from the express safe. When they came to Clerk R. P. Johnson he suggested that they had secured booty enough, and that under the circumstances they had better let the mail matter alone. The masked men liked him and agreed with him. On the Wabash road once a train south bound from Omaha was thrown wholly down an embankment. J. C. Cuff was one of

the four injured postal clerks. His hands were terribly burned by seizing a lamp and holding it to keep it from upsetting and firing the mail matter. These valorous examples are not

unusual.

The Postmaster General has reported that the total number of railway post office car wrecks in the year 1891 was 319. In these thirteen clerks were killed, sixty-eight severely injured, and eightyfour slightly injured. The percentage of killed and wounded in the railway postal service is greater than the American army suffered in the war with Mexico. The following table gives the figures for the last six years (and seven railway postal clerks were killed in last September alone):

The Department does all it can to provide for strengthened and well-equipped cars. There are saws, axes, hammers, and crow-bars, as usual, and safety bars extend overhead the whole length so that the clerks may swing from them if trains leave the track. But the position of the postal car, commonly next the tender, is unusually dangerous, and there is no way of preventing the carnage. Legis

On the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern R. R., at Tipton, Ohio, April 18, 1891, in which six postal clerks lost their lives.

lation has been repeatedly asked of Congress, but there is strong aversion to a civil pension list in this country, and no legislation has resulted. It has been repeatedly recommended that the Postmaster General be authorized to use the fund arising from deductions because of the failure of clerks in the Railway Mail Service to perform duty, and for other causes, in paying to the widow and minor children of each permanent railway postal clerk killed while on duty the sum of $1,000, and that in the event that there is not a sufficient amount arising from deductions, the Postmaster General shall be authorized to make up the deficiency from the regular appropriation

for the payment of railway postal clerks. But this has always failed. Captain White is of opinion that the best interests of the service, the clerks, and the public can be secured by a law to be known as the Railway Mail Service Superannuation Act, to provide for the retirement of all permanent clerks on one third or half pay who have become incapacitated for further service by reason of age, injuries received while in the discharge of their official duties, or other infirmities not attributable to vicious habits; the fund out of which the clerks so retired shall be paid to be created by withholding a sum equal to one half of one per cent. per annum of the salary paid every permanent clerk employed in the service, and one per cent. of the annuity paid those placed upon the superannuated list. This deduction would be slight for each individual, but would in the aggregate amount to about $31,000 per annum, and as but little of it would be drawn from the fund thus created during the first few years succeeding the passage of the act, it would reach by accumulation sufficient proportions to make the act effective as fast as retirements became necessary. That the deduction would not work even temporary hardship to those coming under its operations is shown by the fact that it would amount to but fifty cents on each $100 paid the clerks in active service and $1 on each $100 paid those placed upon the superannuated list.

The term "nixies " embraces all mail matter not addressed to a post office, or addressed without the name of the state being given, or otherwise so incorrectly, illegibly, or insufficiently addressed, that it cannot be transmitted. Matter of this kind is always withdrawn and sent to the division superintendent. The following are the only exceptions to this rule: mail addressed to military and naval posts and stations of the signal and life-saving services which are not post offices is sent to the proper post office, if known. Mail addressed to discontinued post offices, or to offices whose names have been changed, or to watering places and summer resorts which are not post offices, is sent to the nearest post office known. Mail addressed by the Department to new post offices, marked on the envelope "new office," is sent to its destination in the best manner practicable. When clerks know that matter addressed to a post office where the name of the state is not given is intended for the principal city of that name (being, for instance, addressed to a