Mailbox

“ You'll get a menu identical to the one in your mailbox from which you can read these old messages, delete them or respond to them. It's probably a good idea to clear out your mailbox and mbox file from time to time, if only to keep them uncluttered. Are there any drawbacks to e-mail? There are a few. One is that people seem more willing to fly off the handle electronically than in person, or over the phone. Maybe it's because it's so easy to hit r and reply to a message without pausing and reflecting a moment. That's why we have smileys (see section 2.4) ! ”

“ Electronic mail, telex, and fax ========================================== Electronic mail is one of the most popular online services. People living thousands of miles apart can exchange messages and documents very quickly. International Resource Development, Inc., an American research organization, claimed (1992) that we can send electronic mail to more than 10 million personal mailboxes. We believe the figure to be much higher. The Matrix News (Texas, U.S.A.) claims the number is over 18 million (March 1993) . ”

“ Formerly, people went to the nearest postoffice for their mail; now, in all cities, the mail is delivered by postmen, just as the letter from Uncle Charles was delivered to-day.
“In almost all parts of the country there is a rural free delivery. By the roadside in front of each farmer’s house is a mail-box, having the name of the owner upon it.
“A letter carrier drives through the neighborhood with the mail. When he leaves mail in a box he raises a little signal which is attached to it in such a way that it can be seen from the farmhouse. ”

“ It will be a very pleasant thing to be able to post letters without going off our own doorsteps, but this is only half of the comfort which the new box is going to be to us.
In each post-box will be a special envelope containing blanks, on which the householder can order one and two cent stamps and postal-cards, putting the money to pay for them into the envelope with his order.
The postman collects this envelope with the regular mail, and hands it to a special clerk, who takes out the money, fills the order, and drops the envelope in the mail for the postman to deliver on his next round. ”

“ This is only one way in which you can be independent of the ordinary mail service. I suspect that many persons who have not a Postal Guide in their possession are ignorant of the fact that a letter weighing 4 oz. may be handed in at a passenger station for immediate transmission by railway. This is a convenience to many people who have lost the post and are near a railway station. Then you can use the telephone to speed up your mail service. You can telephone a letter to a post office, and it will be taken down in writing there and despatched by express delivery. ”

“ One often sees little boxes in the country places nailed to some tree on the road. It is there that the letters for the settlers, squatters, and cockies are left by the mailmen; while it is generally one of the duties of the daughter of the house to ride for the mail once, or perhaps twice, a week, twenty miles or so to where the precious documents have been dropped into the private box. ”

“ When the address of the sender can be obtained, the mail shall be put into a special envelope and returned to the sender; when it cannot be returned to the sender, it shall be disposed of according to the following guidelines: 1. In the event that the documents or materials inside are of no value or not saleable, the mail item shall be destroyed one month after it has been posted for claim, starting from the mailing date. If the contents of an item of mail are perishable, the post office may destroy them at any time it chooses. ”

“ No dweller in lands where the double knock of the postman comes many times in the day can know the thrill of the weekly mail, discharged from the steamship in Capetown and heralded in its progress up the line by telegrams that announce to the little dorps along the railway the hour of its coming. They have not waited with a patient, preoccupied throng in the lobby of the post-office where the numbered boxes are, and heard beyond the wooden partition the slam of the bags and the shuffle of the sorters, talking at their work about things remote from the mail. ”

“ Look downstairs. As your mail falls in through that slot, or is brought in by a mailman it is put through an ink-daubing apparatus—that's it, right down in front of you—which totally ruins its stamp. How about your man's photo, now?"
A good laugh rang around, and our official said:—
"Now a man sorts it according to its inscription, puts it into a canvas bag and aboard a train, or possibly an aircraft. But that bag has mail going to points a long way apart, so a man in a mail car sorts it out, so that Chicago won't find mail in its bag which should go to California." ”

“ Postmasters are instructed not to receive any letter, &c. which there is good reason to believe contains any thing likely to injure the contents of the mail-bag or the person of any officer of the post-office. If such a packet be posted without the postmaster’s knowledge, or if at any time before its despatch he should discover any such packet, he is directed not to forward it, but to report the case, with the address of the packet, to the secretary. ”

“ In all mail communications, such as those which are about to be considered, the point to be kept steadily in view, and one which is absolutely indispensable, is to connect and to bring the return mails and the outward together, in such a manner as that every intermediate place shall have the full benefit of both, without trenching upon the general interests, or occasioning any unnecessary detention or delay. This great and essential point is more particularly necessary to be attended to in the conveyance of mails by sea to distant parts, especially if conveyed by steam. ”

“ Such mail matter must not be delivered until the postage due shall have been paid.
When carriers making collections from letter boxes find that it will be impossible on any one trip to carry to the post office the contents of all the boxes on their routes, preference must be given to mail matter of the first class. Newspapers and packages placed on the tops of letter boxes should be collected when it can be done without overloading the mail sacks and preventing the prompt collection of mail matter properly deposited in the boxes. ”

“ EARLY BRISTOL POST MARKS.
The mail services in the rural districts are not free from danger. The pitcher may have been carried to the fountain year after year without mishap, but it not infrequently becomes broken at last. In like manner the contractor for the Portishead, Clevedon, and Yatton mail cart service, after having driven over this route with immunity from accident for forty years, yet came to grief in the last week of his connection with His Majesty's mails, January, 1902. ”

“ It is not just that the farmer, who receives his mail at a neighboring town, should not only be compelled to send to the post-office for it, but to pay a considerable rent for a box in which to place it or to wait his turn at a general-delivery window, while the city resident has his mail brought to his door. ”

“ The reception of mail consists of one damaged street letter-box set upon a box in front of the building and guarded by a carrier, who has also to see that there is no crowding in the long lines of people waiting to get their turn at the two windows where letters and stamps are served out. ”

“ In relation to opening the mails on the Sabbath, it may be noticed that the ninth section of the “act regulating the post-office establishment” makes it the duty of the postmaster to attend to the duties of his office “every day” on which a mail shall arrive at his office, and at “all reasonable hours” on every day of the week. When a mail is conveyed on the Sabbath, it must be opened and exchanged at the offices which it may reach in the course of the day. ”

“ In nothing perhaps will the advantages now offered by the Post-office, in connection with the packet service, be more appreciated by the public than in the reduced rates of postage. The following table shows the initial rates for letters to several places abroad in 1829 and in 1884: [81] —
If we were asked to point out a mail-packet of the present day as fulfilling all modern requirements in regard to the packet service, and showing a model of equipment in the vessels as well as order in their management, we would not hesitate to name the mail-steamers plying between Holyhead and Kingstown. ”

“ And, if any person shall take any letter or packet, not containing any article of value, nor evidence thereof, out of a post-office, or shall open any letter, or packet, which shall have been in a post-office, or in custody of a mail carrier, before it shall have been delivered to the person to whom it is directed, with a design to obstruct the correspondence, to pry into another's business or secrets ”

“ If you cannot get a post-chaise, take off one of the coach-horses, and ride with your bags to the next stage; there take another horse,—and so on till you come to the end of your ground, when you must deliver the bags to the next guard, who must proceed in the same manner. If your mail is so large (as the York, Manchester, and two or three others are at some part of the road) that one horse cannot carry it, you may take two; tie the mail on one horse and ride the other. The person who horses the mail must order his horsekeeper at every stage to furnish you with horses in case of accidents. ”

“ If the mail be carried in a stage, coach, or sulky, it will be the duty of the driver to deliver it as near the door of the post-office as he can come with his vehicle, but not to leave his horses, and he should not be permitted to throw the mail on the ground.
Post masters will not suffer newspapers to be read in their offices by persons to whom they are not addressed ”

“ When merchants lock up their desks and offices, and complete their last round of duties by posting their letters, the serious work of the Post-Office, for the second time during the day, may be said to begin. The hour before the despatch of the principal mail in any provincial Post-Office, thanks in great part to the dilatoriness of the public in general, is an hour of busy activity, seldom witnessed in any other branch of industry whatever. ”

“ The handling of registered mail differs chiefly from the handling of ordinary mail in the extra care which is taken to safe-guard it. The aim is to record it at the time of receipt, and to thereafter require all persons handling it to account for it as it passes through their hands along its route. Receipts are required at all points, and the letters are forwarded in pouches secured by "rotary locks," provided with certain numbers running in sequence, controlled mechanically, the mechanism being such that the lock cannot be opened without raising the number at which the lock was set. ”

“ Where the mail is large, it is usually brought from the post office by wagon, the smaller deliveries being brought by regular post office carriers. All registered letters and parcels are carefully checked as to number, by actual count, and compared with number entered on post office registration sheets, before signing for them. Envelopes are first cut open by one or more persons. Registered letters are kept separate from all others, are distributed separately and accounted for before any ordinary mail is handled. ”

“ In the case of a piece of paper folded into something resembling a postcard, unless it complies with the specifications for aerogrammes or letter sheets, it shall be posted as a letter. Article Seven The term "aerogrammes and letter sheets" refers to pieces of paper issued by Chunghwa Post that are folded into envelopes and sealed on all sides for mailing, with postage printed on the cover and a blank space inside for the sender to write messages on. Aerogrammes are used for international airmail and letter sheets are used for domestic mail. ”

“ Some people, indeed, recognising the absurdity of calling a decrepit old man a “postboy,” preferred to give him the title of “mailman,” by which name a postal servant who got drunk and delayed the Bath mail in 1770 is styled in a contemporary newspaper, which says, “The mail did not arrive so soon by several hours as usual on Monday, owing to the mailman getting a little intoxicated on his way between Newbury and Marlborough and falling from his horse into a hedge, where he was found asleep by means of his dog.” ”

“ Outside the Post-office department it is probably not apprehended to what extent care is actually bestowed upon letters and packets—when, in course of transit through the post, their covers are damaged or addresses mutilated—in order to secure their further safe transmission; many envelopes and wrappers being of such flimsy material that, coming into contact with hard bundles of letters in the mail-bags, they run great risk of being thus injured. ”

“ With but few exceptions, the mails in which the missing letters and money packages should have been conveyed to New York, would have come from the East by the express night trains, over the Boston and New York Railroad. Upon those trains, the mails were in charge of the baggage-masters, the regular mail or "route agents" being confined to the way mail-trains running at different hours of the day. A variety of circumstances, besides their good reputation, conspired to avert suspicion from these baggage-men. ”