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Show the letter was delivered in that town! Needless to say a letter addressed "Louis M. Mohar, Any Old Fruit, New Jersey," finally found its way to th dead letter office, as the address was not specific enough even for the experts. ex-perts. One wound-be humorist addressed ad-dressed a letter to "Saccharine Elevation, Eleva-tion, N. H.," and it was delivered to a man for whom it was intended in Su-,?ar Su-,?ar Hill, N. H. A letter postmarked Sing Sing, and addressed to "Mr. Pluto, Plu-to, The Fourth Circle. Hades, On the Styx," is still awaiting identification at the dead letter office, Washington. Here is an address which exhibits an abounding faith in the knowledge and memory cf the postal authorities: ! n point of fascina- ' J1-, Yy.'. tlon for the casual Jjp,is, investigator there I 1 iX- is probably no fea- " ' ture of the New- York postoffice system which can compare with the department where knotty problems in badly addressed letters are solved. The work of ascertaining the names of the addressees is carried on laboriously labor-iously day after day,i and seemingly hopeless characters on the envelopes are usually resolved into intelligible addresses before the "blind readers," as the clerks are termed, are willing to give up their labors. A veritable curiosity shop of chiro-graphy chiro-graphy is this department of the post-office. post-office. As was jocularly pointed out by one of the clerks the other day, "there is some advantage in ignorance, anyhow. If everybody knew how to read, write and spell correctly and legibly leg-ibly we would lose our jobs." The exhibits ex-hibits in the office illustrate a widespread wide-spread desire for practical joking, for the postoffice is often in receipt of communications the addresses on which have obviously been inspired by the desire to have some fun "with those postoffice fellows." It is estimated esti-mated that nearly a million of those badly addressed letters are handled by the office every year. The work of deciphering the names and addresses ad-dresses is intrusted to three men. Their days are pretty full, and they have little time for loafing. And as the records show that of the number received fully 85 per cent are ultimately ultimate-ly delivered, it may be gathered that the service is an efficient and useful one. ! Reduced to plain English this means Louis Sawyer, Auburn, Me., the pine tree indicatine the name of the state and the "Lo" of the "poor Indian" providing a clue to the first syllable of the addressee's1 Christian name. One of the chief requirements for the work is a knowledge of the names of streets in all of the difCerent cities and towns of the country, as many addresses have the name of the street properly indicated, but existed in a city in which it does not exist. It ia easy enough for the clerk to recognize in "Broad Street, Brooklyn," a letter intended for Philadelphia, but when rt gets down to the minor streets in smaller towns considerable knowledge is required to properly locate the addressee. ad-dressee. Persons with artistic proclivities send addresses such as this, and ttie-letters ttie-letters are usually delivered promptly: The name of E. S. Burtis, Addison, Hartford county, Conn., is thus expressed ex-pressed by one writer. The day the above reached the post-office post-office two clerks devoted the major portion of their time to it. Finally, as a last resort, it went to Mr. Menger. the head of the department, and after he had wrestled with it for several hours it was finally resolved into this: Miss Lee Dunn, Woodville, Rapp county, coun-ty, Va. The letter was delivered to that address, which was found to be the correct one. Some of the greatest difficulties encountered en-countered by the "blind reader" are due to the fact that writers are not particular about the exact spelling of the names of towns and cities. Their efforts mark the very apex of phonetic spelling. This kind of address comes most frequently from foreign countries, coun-tries, where the writers have merely tried to convey the name according to the sounds as they have heard them. But not infrequntly Americans make the same sort of mistakes. For example, exam-ple, there was the girl, whose handwriting hand-writing indicated unmistakably that she was a- native of this country, who addressed a letter to "Cold Snake, N. Y." What she meant was Colt's Neck, N. Y., and the addressee was discovered discov-ered at that point. A similar confusion existed in the mind of a writer who was responsible for "Dutch Johnson, N. Y.," when what was intended was Duchess Junction. Junc-tion. And another example of the same kind of error is found in an envelope addressed to "Hell's Meadow, N. Y.," and intended for Helmetta. ' . i Here is an example of an-exceptionally difficult address that was finally deciphered by Mr. Menger: . Matt"' Reduced to plain English the address is Mrs. Caroline Yanowski, Tenth Story, 242 Chambers street. N. Y America. It is not often the postoffice authorities authori-ties have to confess inability to decipher de-cipher addresses, but this one was given up. It was felt to be asking too much of the clerks to remember just where the last letter received by this gentleman was delivered: '...IK?. The jokers have all sorts of fum at the expense of Jersey towns, and the Oranges ' are full of suggestions for those who send "catch" addresses to the postoffice. "Chopped Beef," N. J., had to be translated "Hamburg," and |