I examined the blank, and sure enough the wary Boston h. c. had thoughtfully concealed that statistic.  I asked him at what hour it had started from Boston.  He answered up as brightly as ever, and said he didn’t know.

I examined the blank, and sure enough the Boston h. c. had left that statistic out in the cold, too.  In fact it turned out to be an official concealment—­no blank was provided for its exposure.  And none required by the law, I suppose.  “It is a good one-sided idea,” I remarked; “They can take your money and ship your telegram next year if they want to—­you’ve no redress.  The law ought to extend the privilege to all of us.”

The boy looked upon me coldly.

I asked him when the telegram reached York Harbor.  He pointed to some figures following the signature at the bottom of the blank—­“12.14.”  I said it was now 1.45 and asked—­

“Do you mean that it reached your morgue an hour and a half ago?”

He nodded assent.

“It was at that time half an hour too late to be of any use to me, if I wanted to go and meet my people—­which was the case—­for by the wording of the message you can see that they were to arrive at the station at 11.45.  Why did, your h. c. send me this useless message?  Can’t he read?  Is he dead?”

“It’s the rules.”

“No, that does not account for it.  Would he have sent it if it had been three years old, I in the meantime deceased, and he aware of it?”

The boy didn’t know.

“Because, you know, a rule which required him to forward to the cemetery to-day a dispatch due three years ago, would be as good a rule as one which should require him to forward a telegram to me to-day which he knew had lost all its value an hour or two before he started it.  The construction of such a rule would discredit an idiot; in fact an idiot —­I mean a common ordinary Christian idiot, you understand—­would be ashamed of it, and for the sake of his reputation wouldn’t make it.  What do you think?”

He replied with much natural brilliancy that he wasn’t paid for thinking.

This gave me a better opinion of the commercial intelligence pervading his morgue than I had had before; it also softened my feelings toward him, and also my tone, which had hitherto been tinged with bitterness.

“Let bygones be bygones,” I said, gently, “we are all erring creatures,
and mainly idiots, but God made us so and it is dangerous to criticise.” 
                         Sincerely
                                   S. L. Clemens.