Phony Express

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, nor locked doors, nor tightfisted undergraduates can keep these couriers from selling tickets to the postmen's ball.

Hardened by the wind and ice that go with a Boston winter, the mailmen have managed to build up remarkable resistance to relatively mild cold shoulders. Also in their favor is the fact that they bring draft board notices, bills, checks, and the like. When the mailman shoves his foot in a University door, he is well aware of the importance of the U.S. Mail to the student he solicits.

Most mailmen do not rest their pleas merely on the sinister threat of "no sale, no mail." They usually remark that "everyone else in the entry bought a ticket and don't you realize that your small deflated dollar is going to help old retired mailmen who need it much more than you do, I'm sure." If one stands still and says nothing, the mailman will also stand and wait. If one says he has no dollar to spare just now, the mailman will plunk his ticket on the nearest flat surface with the promise to come back for the dollar later. Some, perhaps, with iron wills and few correspondents are able to think of the postal solicitors as annual nuisances, whom they can dismiss with a series of flat, firm "no's." Many more, defeated by timidity and high-pressure salesmanship, surrender their dollars.

All this is not to say that the postmen don't need benefit dances, and that those who feel like buying tickets shouldn't. But the mailmen, under University regulation and under a University--Post Office agreement, do not belong in rooms, selling tickets. Therefore, if with tickets instead of letters, they appear at your door, you will be quite justified in slamming it.