Postman’s Knock

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 81, 29 December 1928, Page 13

Postman’s Knock

A KNOCK and a ring—who’s that at the door? Oh, it’s only the postman. Only the postman—that may be literally true, but is he really as unimportant as the phrase implies? Isn’t he rather an amazing magician, a kind of Celestial conjuror who can produce sorrow and happiness and love and torment from that hardworn bag of his? I always seem to think of him like that, and I can never look at a pillar-box without a certain amount of awe. There is something menacing about that box—slip your letter into it, and you have taken an irrevocable step, you have inevitably added, it may be, to the joy or the anger or the bitterness of the world. That is surely sufficient to make us consider this business of letter-writing, and wonder whether we have placed it on quite a high enough plane. . We vary so much as correspondents. Some of us write too many letters, and some of us write too few: my own fault, I know, is to write too many, a fault which is only made possible by a wonderfully forbearing secretary. I remember one man who wrote too few. It was during the war, and I had a letter from a mother in Australia, whose son had come over with the Australian forces; and she was heart-broken because he had not once written to her in all the months he had been away. She wasn t worrying about him. but she just longed to see his handwriting and to know that he still thought about her. Now it so happened that I came across that son, and was able to ask him why he hadn’t written to his mother. He was unhappy about it —of course he was but he had meant to write, he’d put it off, and somehow lie "hadn’t had time.” Well, that answer made us both laugh; it seemed as he said it so absurd, but so understandable that the months had slipped by, and yet merely a line from him would have meant inexpressibly much to one lonely woman. Through lack of thought he had inflicted something amounting to torture on his mother. That point of view just hadn’t occurred to him, as it so often doesn’t occur to us.

I suppose some of the happiest moments of our lives have been when we have read what some friend has written to us, and some of the unhappiest moments have come from a cutting sentence or a careless word in a letter. It is so much more than a mere business or a social necessity, this letter-writing, for by the right use of a word or phrase we can help

so much, and by another word or phrase we can hurt more than we may ever know. Such a power—and it does exist—is a responsibility not to be lightly regarded. And it is a responsibility which we must accept; we must, so to speak, wave a wand over the postman, and transform him from a mysterious messenger of Destiny- into an agent whereby we “also may serve. That, I feel, is so important. It is easy enough to sit down and answer a letter, but it is'so much more difficult, and so much more worth while, to initiate one. There are times when a letter can be so full of meaning, when it can emphasise a pleasure, qr soften a blow, or come as an assurance of the reality of human comradeship in a lonely and unreal world. Those are the occasions for letter-writing which matter, the unexpected occasions which may show' our friends that we are really going along the road together. Letters of congratulation on coming into a fortune or on the arrival of the baby are all very well, but they are so obviously indicated that they have become almost conventions. How much better it would be to receive a letter recalling a happy day in the country, or reminding us of an illness through which we had passed safely a year ago —and how much better to think of -our friends and send them letters on such occasions., '- /■ So far I’ve talked only about pleasant letters, the angels, as they have been called, who join one friend to another, but it is unfortunately true that there are devils who travel by the same route. Sometimes, I know, it is impossible not to be angry, and it does help to sit down aiid express that anger in a letter. But we need not post that letter—certainly* we need not post it until next morning, when it may not seem quite so satisfactory. The written word is too final to be placed thoughtlessly on record: an angry expression in conversation can be explained, but the cold print of a phrase written in the heat and bitterness of the moment stands for ever, and time will not efface its sting. That is the tragedy of letter-writing, and it can be so serious a tragedy that a little patience and a second thought are surely the least precautions which we should take in order to avert it. The postman’s knock brings sorrow often enough without our selfish aid.

But it is because that knock can bring so many lovely things that it seems to me that we might think over the subject of letter-writing again, and look with more respectful eyes upon the pillar-box-at the end of the road.—The Rev. H. R. L. (“Dick”) Sheppard, in “St. Martin’s Review.”