a postmaster's apology

Recently I sent a letter to a friend in Amsterdam, only for her to receive it with mysteriously charred edges. A previous letter had arrived with some of its contents missing. There is definitely something odd going on with this line of postal communication!

It seems almost impossible sometimes to work out where postal damage has occured, with so many stages of the journey from when a letter dives into the postbox to when it slides through a mailbox slot.

In the days of pneumatic tube mail transportation, mishaps also occured, and love letters would go missing, postcards sent to the wrong address and blockages and leakages cause postal disorder. Traces of these accidents are evident in some pieces of mail, including this postcard:

However, hopefully the recipient was consoled by this wonderful, polite apology from a Boston postmaster:

Postcards from stampboards