Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/190



Let it beckon! Let it nod!
 * My knees are supple-jointed;

It cannot stop me if it would
 * Before the day appointed.

are sermons in stones; but how many in letters! It matters little what may be within them. I have a whole batch, now before me, which I do not intend ever to open; and one, I know by the postmark, is fifteen years old. There is quite enough interest for me in their envelopes and their superscriptions, in their crests and stamps, in the blots and the scratches they have picked up on their way. For a letter can, no more than a man, get through the world without some rubs, often of the hardest. Here is a dainty little pink thing of an envelope, longer than it is broad—a flimsy brick from the temple of love, shot away as rubbish long ago. It is directed in the beautifullest little Italian hand—so small that the effigy of her most gracious Majesty on the stamp might be, by comparison, the portrait of the sovereign of Brobdingnag. But, woe is me! that careless postman! The little letter, ere ever it reached me, tumbled into the mud. Dun brown splashes deface its fair outside. The mud is dry as dust now, but not dustier or drier than the memories which the envelope awakens.

Those droll dogs of friends you knew once, were addicted to sending you "comic" envelopes through the post—monstrous caricatures of yourself, or themselves, sketched in pen and ink—waggish quatrains in the corner addressed to the postman or to Mary the housemaid who took the letters in. They fondly hoped, the facetious ones, that the letter-carrier would crack his sides, that Mary would grin her broadest grin, at the sight of their funny letters. But Mary and the postman did nothing of the kind. Once in a way, perhaps, the hardworked servant of the G. P. O. who handed in the "comic" missive would observe, "He must be a rum 'un as sent this;" but the remark was made, more in grim disparagement than in humorous appreciation. As for Mary, she would still further turn up that nasal organ for which nature had already done a good deal in the way of elevation, and would remark, "I wonder people isn't above such trumperies." Mary knew and revered the sanctity of the post. Did you ever study the outsides of servants' letters? When the housemaid has a military sweetheart, he is generally in the pedestrian branch of the service, and his hand being as yet more accustomed to the plough than to the pen, he induces a smart sergeant to address his letters for him. The non-commissioned officer's stiff, up-and-down, orderly-room hand is not to be mistaken. He is very gallant to the housemaid. He always calls her "Miss" Mary Hobbs; but, on the other hand, he never omits to add a due recognition of yourself in the "At William Penn's, Esq." I have even known a sergeant ascend to the regions of "Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera," and a flourish. Mary's old father, the ex-butcher, does not waste any vain compliments upon her or upon you. "Mary Hobbs, housemaid, at Mr. Penn's." He is a courteous old gentleman, nevertheless; and if Mary shows you her letter, which she does sometimes in pardonable pride at the proficiency of her papa, who, "although he was never no schollard and going on for seventy-three, is as upright as a Maypole," you will rarely fail to discover, in the postscript, that he has sent his "duty" to you.

But, I repeat, I have had enough in my time of the insides of letters, and I intend to write no more letters, and to read as few as ever I possibly can. With the aid of a poker, a good wide fireplace and a box of matches, I got rid, recently, of a huge mass of old letters. It was the brightest of blazes, and you would have been astonished by the diminutiveness of the pile of sooty ashes which remained in the grate after that bonfire. Yet have you not seen in the little frescoed pigeon-holes of the Roman Columbaria, that a vase not much bigger than a gallipot will hold all that is mortal of one who was once senator, pro-consul, prætor—what you please? The ashes of a lifetime's letters will not more than fill a dustpan.

Dismissing the letters themselves, relegating them all to fiery death behind those bars, I linger over the envelopes; I dwell upon the postmarks, I long to be in the distant lands to which those marks refer. There is vast room for speculation in the address of a letter, for, in the mass of hand-writings you have seen, many have been forgotten. In the letter itself your curiosity is at once appeased, for you turn to the signature mechanically, and ten to one, if the letter be an old one, to read it gives you a sharp pang. Burn the letters, then; keep to the envelopes. Especially scan those which have been directed to you at hotels abroad. In very rare instances does the memory of a foreign hotel remind you of aught but pleasant things. You lived your life. The bills were heavy, but they were paid. You enjoyed.