Show IN CONSTANT PERIL THE RAILWAY MAIL CLERK PERFORMS HIS DUTIES death or serious injury almost certain to follow disaster to train marvelous quickness of hands and brain in demand if any ambitious a athor Is on oil a still hunt for material teeming with frank melodrama Lt tripped ripped of theatric tinsel let him study tudy the life and hardships of the railway mail niall clerk public knowledge of bis his usefulness Is restricted strict ed to very meagre generalities and the average man mail has a scanty idea of the hazards perpetually compassing uncle sams employs emp loes in the flying railway post all over the united states he lie is ever at the poet of danger from a phI physical standpoint right behind the ponderous pounding locomotive i alth ith his mind tensely coneen grated on the work in hand hu he is exposed to any disaster which may assail the speeding train the engineer the fireman the train crew st sa large as a general rule edve warning of approaching danger and are given at least a fighting chance tor for their lives the clerk is behind locked doors most of the time doors that open slowly and heavily too the fact that all his senses are centered within the narrow confines of the car prevents his catching the danger signal and about the tho first intimation ti he lie has of a catastrophe is a terrific collision with alth the lo locomotive conlo an abrupt stop from high speed which throws him the length of the car or the crushing in of the carshell to be followed frequently by fire from which escape is made impossible by confining timbers agility Is not an adequate definition of what is required of this clerk mentally and physically he bo be almost super superhuman human stations large and small are constantly being reeled off by the galloping train and they each pour a varying tide of letters and papers into the car it is highly probable that a largo large percentage of this mall mail Is intended for the next stop a di distance stanco possibly of ten miles more frequently four or five like lightning he lie must sort out this varied heap reading scrawling illegible addresses add reses in a car swaying violently from side to side sometimes the light is poor sometimes the address given Is a little strange to hm him being a new now and obscure post but as the service demands of him bim something approaching infallibility his list of clors must be ti dimmed down to tho the minimum at tho the holiday season or any time of national stress the work ot the railway mall mail clerk is immensely multiplied ti consequently his difficulties periodically his train or another Is late no matter how punctual the schedule in the majority of cases and there Is in accumulation of mall mail to be made up in shortened time vath the drawback of 0 a footing uncertain from the jump lu lit speed by which the conscientious engineer tries to regain a portion of the lost minutes or hours these are only a few of his trials the chronicle could bo prolonged until it filled three times this space recording the simple truth in each line enough has been said to show that the clerks life h N spent literally in the midst of alarms his is opo one of the bazar hazardous dous callings which receive such scant sympathy because so little understood ho he is the modern mercury in a moro literal sense than the postman since his work is broader and done under infinitely more parlous conditions and he should rank very near the top oc tho the list of men who aho are bona fide ilde heroes la in peacetime peace time atlanta constitution |