Letters That Get Badly Damaged in the Post Sealed Up Again Hearing so much of the awful ex-nonces of esteemed residents of shanghai who have their letters opened ov lost in thought that a visit to the miscreants responsi things would be instructive, As the astute sleuth-hound decided to con. coal his presence from the objects of his investigation, he had to adopt peculiar methods' to avoid detection These will not, be revealed beau: they might "otherwise involve the exposure of a po-fect 1 member of the Tiddlywinks Club to a. sticky fend at the hands of infuriated members of the Anti-War Congress. mail bags through friction collect fre also re in order. to. pro fect the contents during the rest of hele Journey before reaching ther Entry into the robbers' den drew attention to an interesting map which showed that letters are de livered not only in Shang quite a number of plac fand on the edge of Chin: the scope for misappropri respondence is therefore large. But besides the map it was discovered that the rules which govern the Post Office officials are very fierce on the subject of violations of mails. It fact, the worst crime in the cod 'The' mystery obviously grew deep, Decause, if It were the, worst crime the code, how came it about that Shanghailunders suffered in the way vividly" described. in. the press? The inquiring sleuth-hound bean to delievo that ho Was on the brink of a great discovery. A turn round the ferner and the need for conces line imselt"™ pushed him suddenly through a'door into a large room where numerous officials were sort Inge large numbers of letters receiv obviously from abroad, and some Were carrying American. stamps, thers "French, German. and "One: ish stamps, with the addition.of postmarks and hieroglyphics suggest. Inge that they had come via Siber The interesting thing about this ceremony was that it resolved itself {nto an amazing kind of jigsaw puzzle work. Apparently, confiding senders of these letters at the other end of the globe were in blissful Sgnorance of the amount of friction and other forms of wear and tear through which their missives would have to pass, Imperfectly sealed up envelopes, inferior paper, loosely tied Parcels, "all contributed to. astounding jumble of enclosures and overs in such a way that very often they. were miles apart even in this ely small. space, if, the permitted. the solo benefit of the addressees and if errors are. made these unintentional, few indeed and would not amount any fault of the Post Office.
Jig-Saw Puzzle The task of the workers was that frostering the right letter to its proper envelope, of sealing up the half opened parcels, and generally reettying the deficiencies of the mail matter in question, A gentleman who was vigorously looking for the right wrapper in which to put the "Ding-Jey' Dell Argus" broke off for the moment to explain to the slouthhound his difficulties, He said something. like this If you could only seo sometimes, sither via. Siberia or the Staves, the on the arrival of "very large. mail,
without envelopes or separated from fargo. number" of letters. received
Their envelopes, number of newspapers, ma periodicals, Without wrappers of any sort, you Soke Balan of th star rossi us Bitten ay Suge, {ger RS Lil Dal Stal wrath agarist incompetent people who buy stamps and purchase state finery and have not. the commonsense to avoid the mistakes which the Post Office so much trouble.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.