r some reason, the mail bag was always brought from
and carried to Pocohontas; Wesley Green requiring a whole day for a
deliberate transit between the two points.

In the post-office, which was the front room of a small wooden house
approached by a high flight of steps, was the postmistress, Miss Harriet
Corvey, who sat on the floor in one corner, while before her extended a
semicircle of men and boys. In this little assemblage certain elderly
men occupied seats which were considered to belong to them quite as much
as if they had been hired pews in a church, and behind them stood up a
row of tall young men and barefooted boys of the neighborhood, while,
farthest in the rear, were some quiet little darkies with mail bags
slung across their shoulders.

On a chair to the right, and most convenient to

Miss Harriet, sat old Madison Chalkley, the biggest and most venerable
citizen of the neighborhood. Mr Chalkley never, by any chance, got a
letter, the only mail matter he received being, "The Southern Baptist
Recorder," which came on Saturdays, but, like most of the people
present, he was at the post-office every mail day to see who got
anything. Next to him sat Colonel Iston, a tall, lean, quiet old
gentleman, who had, for a long series of years, occupied the position of
a last apple on a tree. He had no relatives, no friends with whom he
corresponded, no business that was not conducted by word of mouth. In
the last fifteen years he had received but one letter, and that had so
surprised him that he carried it about with him three days before he
opened it, and then he found that it was really intended for a gentleman
of the same name in another county. And yet everybody knew that if
Colonel Iston failed to appear in his place on mail day, it would be
because he was dead or prostrated by sickness.

With the mail bag on the floor at her left, Miss Harriet, totally
oblivious of any law forbidding the opening of the mails in public,
would put her hand into its open mouth, draw forth a letter or a paper,
hold it up in front of her spectacles, and call out the name of its
owner. Most of the letters went to the black boys with the mail bags who
came from country houses in the neighborhood, but whoever received
letter, journal, or agricultural circular, received also at the same
time the earnest gaze of everybody else in the room. Sometimes there
was a letter for which there was no applicant present and then Miss
Harriet would s