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Show FOUND IN MAILS Many Things Are Forwarded Besides Be-sides Correspondence. Superintendent of Philadelphia Post-office Post-office Tells of Some Amusing Experiences Ex-periences He Had Had. Every one who has watched the crowd collect in front- of the parcel post window at holiday time know that the mail has a more or less hi: morons side, remarks the Philadelphia Record. How humorous It can he you do not realize till you begin to find out about it. Mr. Johnson, the superintendent of j mails at The central postofhee, knows. I He has 27 years' experience. I "Ditl the crying baby ever go through the mails?" the reporter questioned ! him. Mr. Johnson shook his head. "No, I the only live things allowed are live j chicks and bulbs. Everything else UO- der the sun does go. Sometimes very humorous and pathetic incidents occur. "An old Virginia mammy wanted to ship Herself home parcel post. Every Christmas she had received a nice fat package through the mail. It meant direct communication with her own people. She pictured Christmas down on the plantation In all the rosy : glow of her far-off childhood. She craved to go back and she didn't know how to go. She had just enough brains to know that she was too ignorant ig-norant to take the long journey by i herself, So she came to her mistress. " 'Couldn't I just be labeled an' stamped an' weighed,' she demanded, 'and sent along back to Virglnny with the postman? I'd like to give myself my-self as a Christmas present to my folks this year.' "Humorous, but pathetic as well isn't it?" Mr. Johnson (alks like a Virginian and lias a true gift of telling a story. "A negro said there were three kinds of pies, t lie civered, the uncivered and the barred. We have to do with the barred variety. In a country district dis-trict some oue made the most beautiful beauti-ful barred apple pie. They decided to send It through the mails to a friend in Philadelphia. Great was their trust. They put a string through one : of the bars. Tied-on a label with the name and address and the proper j amount of postage. Put the pie In a i pleplate and sent it off on its Journey. "That pie arrived in perfect condition. condi-tion. It had appealed to the humorous sense of the clerks and had been handed from one man to the next with the greatest care." Mr. Johnson also had amusing experiences ex-periences when he worked in the railway rail-way mails. Bags collected at the rural stations often contain queer guests. "I have seen a clerk open a bag and a small snake come out," continued Mr. Johnson merrily; "whenever that happens they look as if they bad-been struck bv green lightning. "The hag had been put down somewhere some-where and somehow the snake had managed to creep in. "At places too small for the express ex-press to stop, the mail bag Is hung out on an iron craire. The postal clo, k grabs it and throws out another as the train goes by. I had just taken off a pouch and opened it when out stepped a chicken. Not a day-old chicken, but a good-sized bird. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw that fowl," |