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it in this place not as a complaint but as a compliment. I think a
compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible,
because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous
and gentle reception.
Still, there is a detail or two connected with this matter which ought
perhaps to be mentioned. And now, having smoothed the way with the
compliment, I will venture them. The head corpse in the York Harbor
office sent me that telegram altho (1) he knew it would reach me too
late to be of any value; (2) also, that he was going to send it to me
by his boy; (3) that the boy would not take the trolley and come the 2
miles in 12 minutes, but would walk; (4) that he would be two hours
and a quarter on the road; (5) and that he would collect 25 cents for
transportation, for a telegram which the he knew to be worthless before
he started it. From these data I infer that the Western Union owes me
75 cents; that is to say, the amount paid for combined wire and land
transportation--a recoup provided for in the printed paragraph which
heads the telegraph-blank.
By these humane and Christian stages we now arrive at the complaint
proper. We have had a grave case of illness in the family, and a
relative was coming some six hundred miles to help in the sick-room
during the convalescing period. It was an anxious time, of course, and I
wrote and asked to be notified as to the hour of the expected arrival
of this relative in Boston or in York Harbor. Being afraid of the
telegraph--which I think ought not to be used in times of hurry and
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