Page:The life and letters of Sir John Henniker Heaton bt. (IA lifelettersofsi00port).pdf/239

 of posting half a dozen letters to America bearing the penny stamp. It was no small gratification to H. H. to receive a letter of congratulation from Mr Roosevelt posted likewise in America just after midnight. Some time later H. H. met Mr Roosevelt at the Guildhall in London.

"It was a very great pleasure to me to post you that letter," said Mr Roosevelt.

"Yes," replied H. H., "but why did you put a twopence-halfpenny stamp on it?"

A letter from Mark Twain ran as follows:

I do hope you will succeed to your heart's desire, in your cheap cablegram campaign, and I feel sure you will. Indeed your cheap postage victory, achieved in spite of a quarter century of determined opposition, is good and national prophecy that you will. Wireless, not being as yet imprisoned in a Chinese wall of private cash and high placed and formidable influence, will come to your aid and make your new campaign briefer and easier than the other one was.

Now then, after uttering very serious words, am I privileged to be frivolous for a moment?

When you shall have achieved cheap telegraphy, are you going to employ it for just your own selfish profit and other people's pecuniary damage, the way you are doing with your cheap postage? You get letter-postage reduced to 2 cents an ounce. Then you mail me a 4 ounce letter with a 2 cent stamp on it, and I have to pay the rest of the freight at this end of the line. I return your envelope for inspection, look at it, stamped, iom one place, is a vast "T," and under it the figures of "40" and under those figures appears an "L," a sinister and suspicious and