"In this country, two things stand first in rank: your flag and your mail. You all know what honor you pay to your flag, but you should know, also, that your mail,—just that ordinary postal card—is also important. But a postal card, or any form of mail, is not important, in that way, until you drop it through a slot in this building, and with a stamp on it, or into a mail box outdoors. Up to that instant it is but a common card, which anybody can pick up and carry off without committing a criminal act. But as soon as it is in back of this partition, or in a mail box, a magical transformation occurs; and anybody who now should willfully purloin it, or obstruct its trip in any way, will find prison doors awaiting him. What a frail thing ordinary mail is! A baby could rip it apart, but no adult is so foolish as to do it. That small stamp which you stick on it, is, you might say, a postal official, going right along with it, having it always in his sight."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
XIII
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Vincent_Wright
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Ernest Vincent Wright
Ernest Vincent Wright (March 26, 1871 – October 6, 1939) was an American writer best known for his 1939 novel Gadsby, a 50,000-word lipogrammatic work which avoids the letter "E" (except for four unintentional instances).
18 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Ernest Vincent Wright →
Related Quotes
"If Youth, throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can th…"
"If you would only stop rating a child's ability by your own; and try to find out just what ability a child has, our y…"
"Though it was long thought that woman's brain was minor in comparison with man's, woman, as a class, now-a-day shows …"
"Oh, what a lot of politically blind city and town officials I could point out within a day's auto trip from Branton H…"
"It is curious why anybody should pooh-pooh a study of fossils or various forms of rocks or lava. Such things grant us…"
"Isn't it surprising what an array of things a woman can drag forth, burrowing into attics, rooms and nooks! Things lo…"
"Now Branton Hills had, as you know, built this school for public instruction; and, as with all such institutions, vis…"
"What a City Council should do, and what it will do, don't always match up."
"Youth, if adults will only admit that it has any brains at all, will stand out, today, in a most promising light. Phi…"
"A man should so carry on his daily affairs as to bring no word of admonition from anybody; for a man's doings should …"