The new postal regulation adds quite perceptibly to my daily burden of work. Needlessly, too—as I think. A day or two ago, I made a note of the addresses which I had put upon letters that day, &Ⓐemendation then ciphered up to see how many words the additional particularities of the new ruling had cost me. It was seventy-two. That amounts to just a page of my manuscript, exactly. If it were stuff that a magazine would enjoy, I could sell it &Ⓐemendation gradually get rich as time rolled on—as it isn’t, I lose the time &Ⓐemendation the ink. I don’t get a cent for it, the government grows no wealthier, I grow poorer, nobody in the world is benefited. Seventy-two words utterly wasted—&Ⓐemendation mind you, when a man is paid by the word, (at least by the page, which is the same thing) this sort of thing hurts. Here are one or two specimens from those addresses—with the unnecessary additions in italics:

Editor “Atlantic Monthly,”

Care Messrs. Houghton Osgood & Co.,

Winthrop Square,

not ital             Boston,Ⓐemendation
                                  Mass.

Nine words wasted—I used to use only the first line & the word “Boston”—and until the letter-carriers lose their minds the additional nine words can never become necessary.

Messrs. Arnold Constable & Co.,

Cor. 19th & B’way,

New York,

N. Y.

Six unnecessary words.

Gilsey House,

Cor. 29th & B’way

New York, N. Y.

Six unnecessary words.

Even the dead people in Boston & New York could tell a letter-carrier how to find these prominent houses. That same day I wrote a letter to a friend at the Windsor Hotel, New York—surely that house is prominent enough, ain’t it? But I could not precisely name the side streets; neither did I know the name of the back street, nor the head cook’s name. So that dea letter would have gone to the dead-letter office sure, if I hadn’t covered it all over with an appeal to Mr. James to take it under his personal official protection & let it go to that man at the Windsor just this once & I would not offend any more.

Now you know, yourself, that it there is no need of an official decree to compel a man to make a letter-address full & elaborate where it is at all necessary—for the writer is more anxious that his letter shall go through than the Postmaster General can be. And when the writer can not supply those minute details, from lack of knowledge, the decree can’t help him in the least. So, what is the use of the decree? As for the those common mistakes, the mis-directing of letters, the leaving off the county, the State, etc.,—do you think an official decree can do away with that? You know, yourself, that heedless, absent-minded people are bound to make those mistakes, & that no decree can knock the disposition out of them.

Observe this—I have been ciphering, & I know that the following facts are correct. The new law will compel 18,000 great mercantile houses to employ three extra correspondence-clerks apiece at $1000 a year—$18,000 $54,000—smaller establishments in proportion. It will compel 30,000,000 of our population to write a daily average of ten extra words apiece—3,000,000,000 300,000,000 unnecessary words; most of these people are slow—the average will be half a minute consumed in on each of those on each ten words—15,000,000 minutes of this nation’s time fooledⒶemendation away every day—say 247,500 hours—which amounts to about 25,000 working-days of 10 hours each; this makes 82 years, of 300 working days each, counting out Sundays & sickness—eighty-two years of this nation’s time wholly thrown away every day! Value of the average man’s time, say $1000 a year—now do you see?—$82,000 thrown away daily; in round numbers, $25,000,000 yearly; in ten years, $250,000,000; in a hundred years, $2,500,000, ,000 Ⓐemendation; in a million years—but I have not the nerve to go on; you can see, fo yourself, what we are coming to. If this law continues in force, there will not be money enough in this country, by & by, to pay for its obituary—& you mark my words, it will need one.

Now we come to the ink. No, let us forbear, let us forbear—in fancy I already see the fleets of the world sailing in it.

Isn’t it odd that we should take a spasm, every now & then, & go spinning back into the dark ages once more, after having put in a world of time & money & work toiling up into the high lights of modern progress? And isn’t it so For many years it has been England’s boast that her postal system is so admirable that you can’t so cripple the direction of a letter that the Post office Department won’t manage some way to find that the person the missive is intended for. We could say that too, once. But we have retired a hundred years, within the last two months, & now it is our boast that only the brightest & thoughtfulest & knowingest men’s letters will ever be permitted to reach their destinations, & that those of the mighty majority of the American people,—the heedless, the unthinking, the illiterate,—will be rudely shot by the shortest route to the Dead Letter office & destruction. It seems to me that this new decree is very decidedly un-American.