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Updated: June 8, 2025
So one bright day, when Ould Michael was sunning himself on his porch, the stage drove up to his door and, as in the old days, dropped the mail-bag. Ould Michael stood up and, waving his hand to the driver, said: "Shure, ye've made a mistake; an' I'm not blamin' ye." "Not much," said the driver. "I always bring my mail to the postmaster." "Hurrah!" I sung out. "God save the Queen!"
He rode a splendid horse that was born for a racer and fed and lodged like a gentleman; kept him at his utmost speed for ten miles, and then, as he came crashing up to the station where stood two men holding fast a fresh, impatient steed, the transfer of rider and mail-bag was made in the twinkling of an eye, and away flew the eager pair and were out of sight before the spectator could get hardly the ghost of a look.
"Yes, ma'am," answered Ajax, "directly, just as soon as this gentleman's got out, and they've taken the mail." He tossed the mail-bag to a small boy who stood on the piazza in waiting to receive it, and then, whipping up his horses, speedily conveyed Mrs. Payson to her destination. "He's a very nice, obleeging young man," said the old lady, referring to Henry Morton.
Miss Phillips, have the kindness to produce that mail-bag, and the signal-book you took from the captain. If you refuse, I shall be obliged to take you on board the ship, as a prisoner."
The postmaster went himself, and his wife accompanied him to "do some shopping." I harnessed the horse for Captain Fishley, and put the mail-bag in the wagon, as I was told to do. I could not help thinking that my tyrants were playing some deeper game than appeared upon the surface. They were certainly looking up evidence to enable them to convict me of robbing the mail.
Many a time have I carried in my trunk more letters than the mail-bag did to Boston, and conscientiously finished all the parish's business before touching my own. A certain amount of self-complacency and satisfaction is felt, and laudably earned, by being intrusted with commissions; and I flatter myself few persons ever set off for New York with such an array of them as I did on this occasion.
If I had been lonely.... I must have caught a certain cheer in the look of the station and in the magnificent, cosmic leisure of the idlers: in Photographer Jimmy Sturgis, in his leather coat, with one eye shut, stamping a foot and waiting for the mail-bag; in old Tillie, known up and down the world for her waffles, and perpetually peering out between shelves of plants and wax fruit set across the window of the "eating-house"; in Peleg Bemus, wood-cutter, stumping about the platform on his wooden leg, wearing modestly the prestige he had won by his flute-playing and by his advantage of New York experience "a janitor in the far east, he was," Timothy Toplady had once told me; in Timothy Toplady himself, who always meets the trains, but for no reason unless to say an amazed and reproachful "Blisterin' Benson! not a soul wants off here"; and in Abel Halsey, that itinerant preacher, of whom Doctor June had spoken.
"Give way together!" commanded Frank, and the cutter, propelled by twelve oars, shot alongside the approaching boat, and the sailors seized the gunwale and held her fast. Resistance was useless. Three rebels quietly delivered up their weapons, and one large, well-filled mail-bag was stowed away under the stern sheets of the cutter.
The wisest lawyer, the shrewdest diplomatist in the land never put forth a subtler weapon than this simple girl's simple letter. It was on the morning of the 3d of April that Draxy dropped her letter in the office. Three days later it was taken out of the mail-bag in the post-office of Clairvend. The post-office was in the one store of the village.
Now we are nearing the Hardanger Fjord; we pass through the narrow straits known as the Löksund, and we enter the fjord. Glorious and ever-changing views open out before us, as hour after hour the steamer passes from one small station to another, dropping a mail-bag, and perhaps a passenger or two.
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