during pioneer and romantic days. The curious adventures related
are partly from his own observation, and partly from the notebooks
of fellow officers, operating in many sections of the Country.

The stories are true, although, of course, justice demands that in
some cases persons and places be usually disguised under fictitious
names.

The stories have interest not only for their exciting play of
honest wits against dishonest, but also for the cautions they sound
against believing things "too good to be true" from the pen of
strangers.


There is a class of post-office thieves who make a specialty of
rifling the registered letters that pass through their hands in
transit on journeys of greater or less length. Some of them have
managed operations very shrewdly, in the evident belief that they
had discovered an infallible method for doing the work and at the
same time escaping detection. Too late they generally learn by sad
experience that no patents can be taken out for the protection of
crime.

In this class of cases something tangible always remains to exhibit
the peculiar style of workmanship belonging to each; and it would
often surprise the uninitiated to learn how many traits of
character, what indexes of habit and vocation, can be picked up by
careful study of the minute points presented for inspection.
Unless, however, an agent cultivates a taste for thoroughness even
to details and trifles that might at first view appear utterly