Thoreau sees the post office as an irrelevant service since he had never gotten more than maybe a couple letters in his lifetime. He supposes "there are not very many essential communications made through it." He sees the news as extremely reiterative and unnecessary. He says "In the event that we read of one man victimized, or killed, or slaughtered unintentionally, usually nobody wants to read a about a bad story more than once and this is logically true