RECOLLECTIONS  OF POSTMASTER JAMES

By John H. McDevitt

On Saint Patrick's Day in 1873 President Grant signed
the commission of Thomas Lemuel James as Postmaster
of New York. Two months later he appointed the nar-
rator, then a lad of thirteen, as messenger. Seeing for
the first time the Post Office on Nassau, between Cedar
and Liberty Streets, I thought that people who entered
it were attending divine service. It was the Middle Dutch
Church, erected in 1714 and occupied by the Government
in 1845. While it was pathetic to read of the farewell
service on the Sunday evening before it became the "home
of letters," I remember the jubilation of the employees
when vacating the place on the last Saturday in Septem-
ber, 1875, recalling the mail courier, Paul Revere, in
the Old South Church on the 19th of April in '75, with
Longfellow's lament: "and hardly a man is now alive
who remembers" that auspicious day when Postmaster
James and nearly three hundred employees gaily marched
up Broadway to the mammoth "Bird Cage" in granite
at Park Row. As Edmund Btirke would exclaim, "O
what a change!" It is gratifying to urge now the de-
struction of this pile and effect the restoration of the
historic park.

Mr. James served as postmaster under Grant and
Hayes, and became Postmaster General when President
Garfield assumed office on March 4, 1881. He was truly
a genial soul with love for his fellows. In fact, he made
it his business here to personally know fraternally every-
one of his clerks and carriers. Their troubles, sorrows,
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