Show IN CONSTANT THE RAILWAY MAIL PERFORMS HIS DUTIES death or serious injury almost tain to follow D to train marvelous qu ackress of hands and brain in demand it any ambitious author Is on a still hunt for material teeming with frank melodrama stripped of theatric tin sel let him study the life and hard ships of the railway mall clerk pub lie knowledge of his usefulness Is re to very meagre generalities and the average man has a scanty idea of the hazards perpetually corn passing uncle sam s employed emp loyes in the flying railway post offices all over the united states he Is eve at the post of danger from a physical standpoint right be hind the ponderous pounding loco motive with his mind tensely concen grated on the work in hand he Is ex posed to any disaster which may as sail the speeding train the engi neer the fireman the train crew at large as a general rule have warn ing of approaching danger and are given at least a fighting chance for their lives the clerk Is behind locked doors most of the time tl en slowly and heavily abu t that all his senses are ahin the narrow confines the car prevents his catching the danger signal and about the first in ti matlon he has of a catastrophe la a terrific collision with the lococo alve an abrupt stop from high speed which throws him the length of the car or the crushing in of the car shell to be followed frequently by fire from which escape Is made imi possible by confining timbers agility Is not an adequate alon of what la required of this clerk mentally and physically he must be almost superhuman stations large and small are constantly being reeled off by the galloping train and they each pour a varying tide of let and papers into the car it la highly probable that a large percent age of this mall Is intended tor the next stop a distance possibly of ten miles more frequently tour or five like lightning he must sort out this varied heap reading scrawling alleg ibie addresses add reses in a car swaying vio bently from side to side sometimes the light Is poor sometimes the ad dress given Is a little strange to him being a new and obscure post office but as the service demands of him something approaching infallibility his list of brors must be trimmed down to the minimum at the holiday season or any time of national stress the work of the railway mall clerk la immensely mul tippled consequently his difficulties periodically his train or another la late no matter how punctual the schedule in the majority of cases and there Is an accumulation of mall to bd made up in shortened time with the drawback of a footing tain from the jump hi speed by which the conscientious engineer tries to re gain a portion of the lost minutes or hours these are only a few of his trials fhe chronicle could be prolonged un til it filled three times this space re cording the simple truth in each line enough has been said to show that the clerks life is spent literally in the midst of alaimo his Is one ot the hazardous callings which receive such scant sympathy because so lit tie understood he Is the modern mercury in a more literal sense than the postman since his work la broader and done under infinitely more parlous conditions and he should rank very near the top of the ast 1st of men who are bona fide heroes peacetime atlanta constitution |