The Jamesburg Record

UNCLE SAM'S AUCTION SALE.

Annual Disposal of the Accumulations of
the Dead Letter Office.

One of the queerest institutions
of the national capital is the annual
clearance sale of the dead letter office,
in which a vast accumulation of articles
gone astray in the mails is sold to the
highest bidders. The auction house
where it is held is continually crowded
with excited men, women and children,
and beside it the bargain counters dur-
ing the holidays are as havens of rest
for when Uncle Sam goes into the junk-
shop business great things are expect-
ed. As in the church fair raffle, you
pay a small amount of money and trust
to luck to get back more than its value.

The articles, previously listed in a
wholesale sort of way, are tied up in
bundles of from three to a half dozen
and "auctioned" for what they will
bring, the average bids ranging between
10 cents and a dollar.

Nobody is permitted to examine the
goods before purchasing, and no money
is refunded to the dissatisfied. Every-
body hopes to pull a genuine plum from
the pie in the shape of a diamond ring,
a silk dress pattern or a silver teapot,
and although comparative blanks are
the rule, there is always the possibility
of a prize. For example, the auctioneer
holds up one of these odd shaped bun-
dles, listed "pictures, underwear, mu-
sic, cigars." Going—going—gone—for
90 cents to a dapper young gentleman
who was caught by the word "cigar."
He opens it on the spot—an unwise
thing to do if one objects to good natured
ridicule—and this is what he finds: Six
cigars, broken into bits with so strong
an odor that one wonders how a sledge
hammer could have done it; underwear
—a female 10 cent "jersey;" pictures—
a collection of newspaper cuts designed
for amusement of some small child.
The lot would be dear at a quarter and
is of no use to the buyer.

In the dead letter office proper—that
charnel house which swallows nearly
half a million missives every month—it
is positively harrowing. More than 40
bushels of photographs have accumu-
lated there, awaiting the annual crema-
tion. There are tresses of hair enough
to stuff a dozen mattresses, grandmoth-
ers' silver locks and babies' golden curls,
many no doubt cut from dead brows,
and small sums of money which poor
workmen send home to feed their wives
and little ones, and servant girls save
from their scanty wages for needy par-
ents—gone to Uncle Sam's rich purse,
not because the United States wants it,
but because the senders' writing or or-
thography was beyond mortal ken. It is
hard to realize that in this land of
schools, at the close of the nineteenth
century, there are so many people so
ignorant or so careless as to send several
millions of letters a year without stamps
or addresses or with addresses which no
man can make out. People seem to be
so intent on what goes into the letters
that they forget all about the superscrip-
tion. It is estimated that $4,500,000 in
drafts and $80,000,000 in cash is receiv-
ed every year through dead letters.—In-
dianapolis Journal.