The postoffice is a noble building, filling half a block on P street between Ninth and Tenth. But, mysteriously, filtered thru a picture-taker’s lens it takes on the appearance of a toy model still sitting on the architect’s desk. This is most deceiving. It is really a handsome and majestic building, of Bedford stone, standing very massively on its green lawn.

It isn’t just a postoffice, as you learned when you were initiated into the Income Taxpayers lodge. Also, if you want to ask how about that money you’re going to get from Uncle Sam when 65, how about a loan for putting up a hog house, how about keeping the black dirt on your farm from drifting into the Missouri, how about enlisting in the army or navy, you go to the postoffice—and also the FBI will reach out from the postoffice and get you if you don’t watch out. If the United States wants to try you for some federal offense, that’s where the trial will be. Having steered clear of this court, the only case we recall offhand is the Nye committee hearing in the Grocer Norris senatorial case.

The first federal court was held in November 1864, in a log building on the south side of O between Seventh and Eighth. Elmer S. Dundy was the judge. The postoffice was run by Jacob Dawson in conjunction with a grocery in the front end, so that office and courtroom were enlivened with the smell of codfish, coffee and tobacco. Somewhere within the log cabin and between the codfish and the cases at bar Mr. Dawson kept house—it may be with the help of a Mrs. Dawson, but one can read early histories of Lincoln from preface to index without finding mention of a woman, so thoroly was the sex still in subjugation.

The postoffice began taking on dignity in 1879 when it moved into its new building on government square, now the city hall. The first section of the present building was put up in 1906; the last, which made it the impressive edifice it is today, only a year or two ago.