Uncle Sam's Sale

One of the queerest "institutions" of the national capital is the annual clearance sale of the dead-letter office, in which a vast accumulation af articles gone astray in the mails is sold to the bighest bidders. The auction house where it is held is continually crowded with excited men, women and children and beside it the bargain counters during the holidays are as havens of rest, for when Uncle Sam goes into the junkshop business great things are expected. As in the church fair rafflle you pay a small amount of inoney and trust to luck to get back more than its value. The articles, previously listed in a Wholesale sort of a way, are tied up in bundies of from three to a half dozen and "aucticmed" for what they will bring, the average bids ranging between 10 cents and $1. Nobody is permitted to examine the goods bef ore purchasing and no money is refunded to the dissatisfied. Everybody 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 bundies, listed "pictures, underwear, music, 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 ie 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, pictures - a collection of newspaper cuts designed for amusement of eome small child. The lot would be dear at a quarter and is of no use to the buyer. In the dead-Ietter office proper - that charnel house which swallows nearly 500,000 missives every month- it is positively harrowlng. More than forty bushels of photographs have accumulated there awaiting the annual cremation. There are treeses of hair enough to stuff a dozen mattresses, grandmother's sllver locks and bables' golden curls, many no doubt cut from dead brows, and small sums of money which poor workmen send home to feed their wivee and little ones and servant girls save from their scanty wages for needy parents - gone to Uncle Sam's rich purse, not because the United States wants it, but becauee the senders' writing or orthography 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 sepd several millions of letters & 7ar without stamps or addresses or with addresees which no man can make out. People seem to be so intent on what goes into the letters that they forget all about the superscription.