in a paper box, merely: "Not much value." True! but if broken when the next package to it, en route, may be a piece of dress silk, or a ten dollar velvet, which must receive a hygienic saturation by the smash, the Express will have a nice. little bill of damages to pay! Promptly reject all such pack ages. It is quite common to send fine goods in paper boxes. Gentlemen's furnishers do so, as a custom; but gentlemen's hats and ladies' bonnets ought to have better protection in transit. Wooden boxes are the proper thing. A stout paper box, with a wooden rack to protect it, is often used by hatters. Costly paintings and pictures ought to be put up, for shipment, by an expert packer of such things. Recently, my attention was called to an instance, in which, with the best intentions to pack a valuable painting with extraordinary care, the owner had it inclosed in tin, nicely soldered up, proof against moisture, or any other means of damage, as he innocently supposed, and shipped it from Europe to Boston, which good old port it may have reached intact, but in transit by Express to the interior, the tin case, being unprotected by a wooden box, got badly indented (the flat surface being large), and the artist's work within was ruined. So there was a big bill for somebody to pay-and should it be the Express company? What do you think about it, yourself? Is it right to expect that the Express messenger shall keep out of harm's way every unsafe package? In the outset of the Express service, when Harnden, or Adams, or Wells could often count all the packages in his "run" on his ten fingers, such paternal care might be the rule; but in these days, when the messenger's car is so crowded with the multitude of all sorts and sizes of boxes, crates, racks, iron castings, trunks, bags and bundles, that he has hardly standing room, it is a very difficult matter always to keep every article from some rough contact. 66 C. F. PEASE, Baltimore, Md. W. J. HARTZELL, Nashville, Tenn. W. L. HUBBELL, Bridgeport Conn.T. A. RUNYON, Easton, Pa. |