Why the Man in Uniform has, generally, sad Eyes.

“What’s the use?” wearily replies the older man.  “There will only come a fresh crowd when those are gone.”

“Oh, well,” argues the other, “that will be a change, anyhow.  I’m tired of looking at this lot.”

I put it to a German post-office clerk once—a man I had been boring for months.  I said:

“You think I write these letters—these short stories, these three-act plays—on purpose to annoy you.  Do let me try to get the idea out of your head.  Personally, I hate work—hate it as much as you do.  This is a pleasant little town of yours: given a free choice, I could spend the whole day mooning round it, never putting pen to paper.  But what am I to do?  I have a wife and children.  You know what it is yourself: they clamour for food, boots—all sorts of things.  I have to prepare these little packets for sale and bring them to you to send off.  You see, you are here.  If you were not here—if there were no post-office in this town, maybe I’d have to train pigeons, or cork the thing up in a bottle, fling it into the river, and trust to luck and the Gulf Stream.  But, you being here, and calling yourself a post-office—well, it’s a temptation to a fellow.”

I think it did good.  Anyhow, after that he used to grin when I opened the door, instead of greeting me as formerly with a face the picture of despair.  But to return to our inexperienced friend.

At last the wicket is suddenly opened.  A peremptory official demands of him “name and address.”  Not expecting the question, he is a little doubtful of his address, and has to correct himself once or twice.  The official eyes him suspiciously.

“Name of mother?” continues the official.

“Name of what?”

“Mother!” repeats the official.  “Had a mother of some sort, I suppose.”

He is a man who loved his mother sincerely while she lived, but she has been dead these twenty years, and, for the life of him he cannot recollect her name.  He thinks it was Margaret Henrietta, but is not at all sure.  Besides, what on earth has his mother got to do with this registered letter that he wants to send to his partner in New York?

“When did it die?” asks the official.

“When did what die?  Mother?”

“No, no, the child.”

“What child?”  The indignation of the official is almost picturesque.

“All I want to do,” explains your friend, “is to register a letter.”

“A what?”

“This letter, I want—”

The window is slammed in his face.  When, ten minutes later he does reach the right wicket—the bureau for the registration of letters, and not the bureau for the registration of infantile deaths—it is pointed out to him that the letter either is sealed or that it is not sealed.

I have never been able yet to solve this problem.  If your letter is sealed, it then appears that it ought not to have been sealed.

If, on the other hand, you have omitted to seal it, that is your fault.  In any case, the letter cannot go as it is.  The continental official brings up the public on the principle of the nurse who sent the eldest girl to see what Tommy was doing and tell him he mustn’t.  Your friend, having wasted half an hour and mislaid his temper for the day, decides to leave this thing over and talk to the hotel porter about it.  Next to the Burgomeister, the hotel porter is the most influential man in the continental town: maybe because he can swear in seven different languages.  But even he is not omnipotent.