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318
The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance
·
James Wilson Hyde
223
In
April
1873,
a
letter
was
posted
in
a
certain
village
in
Ayrshire,
addressed
by
a
wife
to
her
husband,
who
was
in
command
of
a
vessel
bound
for
New
York.
The
letter
was
properly
directed
to
the
captain
by
name,
it
bore
the
name
of
his
ship,
and
was
addressed
to
the
care
of
the
British
Consul,
New
York.
The
captain
never
received
the
letter,
and
this
circumstance
gave
rise,
upon
his
return
from
sea,
to
what
is
described
as
a
"feud"
between
him
and
his
wife,--he,
reposing
perhaps
greater
faith
in
the
Post-office
than
in
the
dutiful
attentions
of
his
wife,
believing
that
his
better-half
had
not
written
to
him,
since
he
failed
to
receive
the
letter
on
application
at
its
place
of
address
in
New
York.
Time,
with
its
incessant
changes,
hopes,
fears,
joys,
and
disappointments,
winged
its
hurried
flight
for
a
period
of
eleven
years
ere
the
matter
which
had
caused
the
feud
came
to
be
fully
understood.
At
the
end
of
that
time
the
same
letter
was
returned
to
the
writer
through
the
Dead-letter
Office,
having
(according
to
the
stamp
upon
it)
been
unclaimed
at
New
York.
It
was
stated
that
the
return
of
the
letter
had
"put
all
to
rights"
between
the
couple
concerned,
though
it
is
to
be
hoped
that
the
healing
hand
of
Time
had
already
done
much
in
this
direction,
and
that
the
return
of
the
long-lost
letter
did
nothing
more
than
put
the
finishing
touch
to
restored
confidence.
In
connection
with
this
matter,
it
was
afterwards
ascertained
that
the
letter
was
one
of
over
4000
similar
letters
returned
to
the
New
York
Post-Office
from
the
offices
of
the
British
Consul
in
that
city,
upon
a
new
appointment
being
made
to
the
Consulate,--the
"new
broom,"
as
one
of
his
first
acts,
having
made
a
clean
sweep
of
this
accumulation
of
letters,
some
of
which
had
been
lying
there
no
less
than
seventeen
years.
How
far
the
failure
of
these
letters
to
reach
the
persons
addressed
was
due
to
their
not
having
been
called
for,
or
to
the
negligence
of
clerks
at
the
Consulate,
is
not
known,
nor
will
it
ever
be
ascertained
what
heart-burnings
and
misery
may
have
been
occasioned
by
this
wholesale
miscarriage
of
correspondence.
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