Leahy

(after stating the facts as above). The court below found, and it may be regarded as established by the record, that no such letter to the Veterans’ Bureau was received or recorded. The appellant asserts that she is entitled to the benefit of the presumption that a notice duly mailed by the insured was in ordinary course received by the bureau. In so contending, however, she assumes an unproven premise.

The presumption that a letter properly directed and mailed reached its destination and was received by the person to whom it was directed is a presumption, not of law, but of fact, and is “subject to control and limitation by other facts.” Schutz v. Jordan, 141 U. S. 213 , 11 S. Ct. 906 , 35 L. Ed. 705 ; Henderson v. Carbondale Coal & Coke Co., 140 U. S. 25 , 11 S. Ct. 691 , 35 L. Ed. 332 . Several items of the evidence in the ease would tend to indicate that no such letter was in fact ever mailed. One is that the insured, who was alive and well and actively engaged in the practice of the law until accidentally killed nearly two years after the date of the alleged letter, sent no further communication to the bureau on the subject of the insurance, and never received an answer to…