William Lewins

In order to give the reader a proper idea of the channel through which ordinary correspondence flows—the circulation of letters in the Post-Office system—it will be necessary to devote a long chapter to the subject. We therefore propose to post an imaginary letter in the metropolis for a village in the far away North, following it from its place of posting till we finally see it deposited in the hands of the person to whom it is addressed.

THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE.

The General Post-Office, the great heart of the English postal system, is a fine and, now that so many district offices are opened in London, very convenient building. On the ground-floor the different offices attached to the Circulation and Mail departments are located. Upstairs we find the Secretary's department, that of the Receiver and Accountant-General, and other branches of the Circulation Office. Approaching the large hall of the General Post-Office, through one of the three-columned porticoes, we post our letter, and as it is now nearly six o'clock P.M. we stand aside, for a few minutes only, to witness one of the most stirring scenes in the metropolis. Throughout the day, one side of the hall presents a busy enough scene, and its boxes, open for the receipt of correspondence for all parts of the world, are constantly beset with people. Not only do these huge slits still gape for letters, but the large windows, closed through the day, are thrown wide open as a quarter to six chimes from the neighbouring clocks. It is then that an impetuous crowd enters the hall, and letters and newspapers begin to fall in quite a literary hail-storm. The newspaper window, ever yawning for more, is presently surrounded and besieged by an array of boys of all ages and costumes, together with children of a larger growth, who are all alike pushing, heaving, and surging in one great mass. The window, with tremendous gape, is assaulted with showers of papers which fly thicker and faster than the driven snow. Now it is that small boys of eleven and twelve years of age, panting, Sinbad-like, under the weight of huge bundles of newspapers, manage somehow to dart about and make rapid sorties into other ranks of boys, utterly disregarding the cries of the official policemen, who vainly endeavour to reduce the tumult into something like post-office order. If the lads cannot quietly and easily disembogue, they will whiz their missiles of intelligence over other people's heads, now and then sweeping off hats and caps with the force of shot. The gathering every moment increases in number and intensifies in purpose; arms, legs, sacks, baskets, heads, bundles, and woollen comforters—for whoever saw a veritable newspaper-boy without that appendage?—seem to be getting into a state of confusion and disagreeable communism, and "yet the cry is still they come." Heaps of papers of widely-opposed political views are thrown in together; no longer placed carefully in the openings, they are now sent in in sackfuls and basketfuls, while over the heads of the surging crowd were flying back the empty sacks, thrown out of the office by the porters inside. Semi-official legends, with a very strong smack of probability about them, tell of sundry boys being thrown in, seized, emptied, and thrown out again void. As six o'clock approaches still nearer and nearer, the turmoil increases more perceptibly, for the intelligent British public is fully alive to the awful truth that the Post-Office officials never allow a minute of grace, and that "Newspaper Fair" must be over when the last stroke of six is heard. One, in rush files of laggard boys who have purposely loitered, in the hope of a little pleasurable excitement; two, and grown men hurry in with their last sacks; three, the struggle resembles nothing so much as a pantomimic mÊlÉe; four, a Babel of tongues vociferating desperately; five, final and furious showers of papers, sacks, and bags; and six, when all the windows fall like so many swords of Damocles, and the slits close with such a sudden and simultaneous snap, that we naturally suppose it to be a part of the Post-Office operations that attempts should be made to guillotine a score of hands; and then all is over so far as the outsiders are concerned.

Among the letter-boxes, scenes somewhat similar have been enacted. Letters of every shape and colour, and of all weights have unceasingly poured in; tidings of life and death, hope and despair, success and failure, triumph and defeat, joy and sorrow; letters from friends and notes from lawyers, appeals from children and stern advice from parents, offers from anxious-hearted young gentlemen, and "first yesses" or refusals from young maidens; letters containing that snug appointment so long promised you, and "little bills" with requests for immediate payment, "together with six-and-eightpence;" cream-coloured missives telling of happy consummations, and black-edged envelopes telling of death and the grave; sober-looking advice notes, doubtless telling when "our Mr. Puffwell" would do himself the honour of calling on you, and elegant-looking billets in which business is never mentioned, all jostled each other for a short time; but the stream of gladness and of woe was stopped, at least for one night, when the last stroke of six was heard. The Post-Office, like a huge monster, to which one writer has likened it, has swallowed an enormous meal, and gorged to the full, it must now commence the process of digestion. While laggard boys, to whom cartoons by one "William Hogarth" should be shown, are muttering "too late," and retiring discomfited, we, having obtained the requisite "open sesame," will make our way to the interior of the building. Threading our course through several passages, we soon find ourselves among enormous apartments well lit up, where hundreds of human beings are moving about, lifting, shuffling, stamping, and sorting huge piles of letters, and still more enormous piles of newspapers, in what seems at first sight hopeless confusion, but in what is really the most admirable order. In the newspaper-room, men have been engaged not only in emptying the sacks flung in by strong-armed men and weak-legged boys, but also in raking up the single papers into large baskets, and conveying them up and down "hoists," into various divisions of the building. Some estimate of the value of these mechanical appliances, moved of course by steam power, may be formed from the fact that hundreds of tons of paper pass up and down these lifts every week. As many of the newspapers escape from their covers in the excitement of posting, each night two or three officers are busily engaged during the whole time of despatch, in endeavouring to restore wrappers to newspapers found without any address. Great as is the care exercised in this respect, it will occasionally happen that wrong newspapers will find their way into loose wrappers not belonging to them, and under the circumstances it would be by no means a matter of wonder if—as has been more than once pointed out—Mr. Bright should, instead of his Morning Star, receive a copy of the Saturday Review, or an evangelical curate the Guardian or Punch, in place of his Record paper.

In the letter-room the officers are no less busily engaged: a number of them are constantly at work during the hours of the despatch, in the operation of placing each letter with the address and postage label uppermost, so as to facilitate the process of stamping. In the General Post-Office the stamping is partly effected by machinery and partly by hand, and consists simply in imprinting upon each letter the date, hour, and place of posting, while at the same time the Queen's head with which the letter is ornamented and franked gets disfigured.[154] It will easily be imagined that a letter containing a box of pills stands a very good chance of being damaged under this manipulation, as a good stamper will strike about fifty letters in a minute. Unpaid letters are kept apart, as they require stamping in a different coloured ink and with the double postage. Such letters create much extra labour, and are a source of incessant trouble to the Department, inasmuch as from the time of their posting in London to their delivery at the Land's End or John O'Groat's, every officer through whose hands they may pass has to keep a cash account of them. The double postage on such letters is more than earned by the Post-Office. All unfastened and torn letters, too, are picked out and conveyed to another portion of the large room, and it requires the unremitting attention of several busy individuals to finish the work left undone by the British public. It is scarcely credible that above 250 letters daily are posted open, and bearing not the slightest mark of ever having been fastened in any way; but such is the fact. A fruitful source of extra work to this branch of the office arises through the posting of flimsy boxes containing feathers, slippers, and other rÉcherchÉ articles of female dress, pill-boxes containing jewellery, and even bottles. The latter, however, are detained, glass articles and sharp instruments of any sort, whenever detected, being returned to the senders. These frail things, thrown in and buried under the heaps of correspondence, get crushed and broken, yet all are made up again carefully and resealed.

When the letters have been stamped, and those insufficiently paid picked out, they are carried away to undergo the process of sorting. In this operation they are very rapidly divided into "roads," representing a line of large towns: thus, letters for Derby, Loughborough, Nottingham, Lincoln, &c. might be placed in companionship in one division or "road," and Bilston, Wednesbury, Walsall, West Bromwich, &c. in another. When this primary divisional sorting is finished, the letters are divided and subdivided over and over again, with the exception of those for the various travelling sorting-carriages upon the different lines of railway, which remain in divisions corresponding with various portions of the country through which the several mail-trains run. It is into one of these divisions that our own letter falls, to be seen again, however, when we come to describe the Travelling Post-Offices. During the time occupied in making up the mails, the Circulation Branch of the General Post-Office presents a busy scene, yet retains the utmost order and regularity. Hundreds of men are engaged in the various operations of sorting and sub-sorting, yet all proceeds really noiselessly, and as if the hundreds and thousands of letters representing the commerce and intelligence of the English people could not be treated too carefully. Every now and again the sorter pauses in his rapid movements, and places a letter on one side. In some cases this signifies that he has detected a letter containing a coin of some sort; and when such letters have been posted without being registered by the sender, the Department takes this duty upon itself, charging a double fee on delivery. The number of letters of this class detected in London alone during the first six months after the plan was brought into operation, was upwards of 58,000. Letters which cannot be read, or letters imperfectly addressed, are also thrown on one side and conveyed to another part of the Circulation Branch, where gentlemen whose extraordinary faculty of discernment have gained them the singularly inappropriate name of "blind officers" sit in state.

THE BLIND LETTER-OFFICE

is the receptacle for all illegible, misspelt, misdirected, or insufficiently addressed letters or packets. Here the clerk or clerks, selected from amongst the most efficient and experienced officers, guess at what ordinary intelligence would readily denominate insoluble riddles. Large numbers of letters are posted daily with superscriptions which the sorters cannot decipher, and which the great majority of people would not be able to read. Others, again, are received with perhaps only the name of some small village, the writers thinking it a work of supererogation to add some neighbouring town, or even a county. Numberless, for instance, are the letters bearing such addresses as "John Smith, gardener, Flowerdale," or "Throgmorton Hall, Worcestershire." Circulars, by the thousand, are posted in London and other large towns without hesitancy, and with the greatest confidence in the "final perseverance" principle of the Post-Office people, with addresses not more explicit than the foregoing. Many country gentlemen would seem to cherish the idea that the names of their mansions should be known equally far and near from their manorial acres, and somehow they seem to inoculate their correspondents with the same absurd notion. If, however, it be possible to reduce the hieroglyphics on some strange letter to ordinary every-day English, or find, from diligent search in his library of reference, information relative to imperfectly-addressed letters (information which might have been given much more easily by the senders), our readers may be sure that the cunning gentleman of the Blind Office, justly known for his patience and sagacity, will do it, unless, indeed, the letter be "stone blind," or hopelessly incomplete. As a genuine example of stone-blind letters, take the following, the first of a batch which has been known to pass through the blind-room of the General Post-Office:—

Uncle John
Hopposite the Church
London.Hingland

It would certainly have been a wonderful triumph of skill to have put this letter in a fair way for delivery: for once the blind officer would acknowledge himself beaten; and then the Dead Letter Officers would endeavour to find "Uncle John's" relative, intimating to the said relative that greater explicitness is needed if "Uncle John" must be found.

But they manage better with the next letter in the batch.

is part of the address of a letter which the sorter no doubt threw away from him with some impatience. The blind officer, however, reads it instantly, strikes his pen, perhaps, through the address, and writes on the envelope, "Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum," and passes it out for delivery.

is seen in an instant to be meant for "Holborn Union." "Isle of Wight" is, in like manner, written on a letter improperly addressed as follows:—

The probability is that the last-mentioned letter will come back to the Dead Letter-Office, on account of no town being given in the address; still, the usual course is to send it out to the local district designated, there being always the possibility that certain individuals may be locally known.

"Ashby-de-la-Zouch" is a town to spell which gives infinite trouble to letter-writers; but the Post-Office official is especially lenient and patient in cases of this kind. There are fifty different ways of spelling the name, and few letters, except those of the better classes, give it rightly spelt. "Hasbedellar-such" is the ordinary spelling among the poor living at a distance.

is a copy of a veritable address meant for the above town.

The blind letter officers of an earlier date succumbed before the following letter:—

but the dead letter officers were enabled from the contents to make out that it was meant for the editor of a Lancaster paper, "where the gaol is." The communication enclosed was an essay written by a foreigner against public schools!

The blind officers are supplied with all the principal London and provincial directories, court guides, gazetteers, &c.; and by the help of this, their library of reference, added to their own experience and intelligence, they are generally able to put again into circulation without the necessity of opening them, five out of six of all the letters which are handed over to them. The addresses of some letters are at once seen to be the result of mistake on the part of senders. Letters addressed "Lombard Street, Manchester," "St. Paul's Churchyard, Liverpool," both obviously intended for London, are sent out for trial by the letter-carriers at what are believed to be their real destinations. (See Ninth Report.) Letters, again, for persons of rank and eminence, dignitaries of the Church, prominent officers of the army or navy, whose correct addresses are known, or can be ascertained, are immediately sent out for delivery to their right destination, however erroneously directed, without question or examination of contents. The following strange letters, meant for the eye of royalty, would not be impeded in their progress in any way:—

and another—

would go to Windsor Castle without fail; while the following, posted in London at the breaking-out of the Polish Insurrection, would find its way to St. Petersburg as fast as packet could carry it:—

When the letter-carriers and the blind officers have expended all their skill upon certain letters in vain, the next step is to send them to

THE DEAD-LETTER OFFICE.

in order that they may be returned to the writers, provided any clue can be obtained from the contents as to their whereabouts. The branch in which this work is accomplished is now a very considerable establishment, employing at least a score more clerks, &c. than in the days of the old postage. In 1763, just a hundred years ago, the records show that two clerks only were engaged in opening "dead and insolvent letters." Now, nearly fifty officers are employed in the same duties. Nor are these duties by any means so only in name. Last year considerably over two millions of letters were returned to their writers through the Dead-Letter Office from failures in the attempts to deliver them. "Three-quarters of the non-deliveries," says the Postmaster-General, "were on account of the letters being insufficiently or incorrectly addressed, nearly 11,000 letters having been posted without any address at all."

In every provincial post-office in England and Wales a dead or returned letter-bag is now forwarded daily to London, containing all the letters which, from any cause, cannot be delivered. Each letter bears on its front, written prominently in red ink, the reason of its non-delivery. Thus, if the addressee cannot be found, or should have left the town, the words "Cannot be found," or "Gone—left no address," are written respectively. On the arrival of these bags in London, inclosed in the larger bags containing the general correspondence, they are at once passed to the "returned-letter branch," as the Dead-Letter Office is called, where no time is lost in opening them. Every letter received is first examined by an experienced and responsible officer, to make sure that it has been actually presented according to its address, and that the reasons assigned on the cover of the letter are sufficient to account for its non-delivery. In doubtful cases, before the letter is opened, the directories and other books of reference, of which there is a plentiful supply in this office, are consulted, and should it be found or thought that there has been any oversight or neglect, the letter is re-issued, with proper instructions, by the first post. About 300 letters are thus re-issued daily, many of which ultimately reach the persons for whom they are intended.

When it has been fully ascertained that nothing further can be done to effect the delivery of an imperfectly or improperly addressed letter, it only remains to have it sent back to the writer. This is done, if possible, without the letter being opened. By an arrangement of ten years' standing, if the returned letter has the writer's name and address embossed on the back of the envelope, impressed on the seal, or written or printed anywhere outside, it will not be opened, but forwarded back according to this address. We may point out here, however, that this arrangement, excellent and satisfactory as it is, has sometimes led to serious mistakes and confusion; so much so, in fact, that the Postmaster-General, in his report for 1861, appealed to the public on the subject. It would appear that the practice of using another person's embossed envelope is on the increase. When such a letter, according to the arrangement, is forwarded to the supposed writer, it has frequently fallen into the wrong hands (the master and merchant instead of the clerk or other servant), and grievous complaints have been made on the subject. The remedy, of course, lies with letter-writers themselves. If there are no outward marks to indicate the sender, the letter is then opened, and, if a suitable address can be found inside, the letter is inclosed in the well-known dead-letter envelope and forwarded according to that address. If a letter should be found to contain anything of value, such as bank-notes, drafts, postage-stamps, the precaution is taken of having a special record taken of it, and it is then sent back as a registered dead letter. Money to the value of 12,000l. or 14,000l. is annually found in these returned letters. Of this sum about 500l. per annum falls into the public exchequer, on account of no address being found inside, and no inquiry being made for the missing letters. A vast number of bank post-bills and bills of exchange are likewise found, amounting in all, and on the average, to something like 3,000,000l. a-year. These bills, however, as well as money-order advices, always afford some clue to the senders, even supposing no address should be given inside the letter, and inquiries are set on foot at the bankers and others whose names may be given in the paper transactions. Forty thousand letters reach the English returned branch each year containing property of different kinds. Many presents, such as rings, pins, brooches, never reach their destination, and are never sent back to the sender, because they are often unaccompanied with any letter. These articles, of course, become the property of the Crown.

Postmasters of Irish towns send their "dead and insolvent letters" to Dublin, and the residuum of the local Scotch post-towns are sent to Edinburgh. In both these capitals, this particular class of letters is dealt with in exactly the same manner as in the London office. We are assured that the letters themselves, and the articles found in the Scotch and Irish dead letters, illustrate no little the characters, the feeling, and habits of the two people. The Scotch have, comparatively speaking, the fewest dead letters; and as the writers are generally careful to give their addresses inside the letters, little trouble is said to be experienced in returning them, if it is necessary. The Irish dead letters are more numerous than either the English or the Scotch. This mainly arises from the circumstance of the nomadic habits of a considerable portion of the Irish people: owing also to the same circumstance, it is impossible to return many of the letters to the writers. The Scotch dead letters rarely contain coin or any very valuable enclosures, while of articles of jewellery, such as usually form presents or tokens of affection, we are told there is a "lamentable deficiency." The Irish dead letters, on the contrary, "are full of little cadeaux and small sums of money," illustrating at the same time both the careless and the affectionate nature of the people.

Letters which can neither be delivered nor returned through the Post-Office are, if found to be valuable and if posted in the United Kingdom, appropriated to the public revenue after a certain time; if received for delivery from a foreign State, they are sent back to the chief office of that country for final disposition. Letters posted in this country found to be of no value, are kept at the Post-Office for a month and then destroyed; foreign letters under the same circumstances are not destroyed for two months.

And now, unless we at once return from our digression, we shall not be in time to see the great night-mail despatched from St. Martin's-le-Grand. Whilst we have been occupied with a contemplation of the few waifs and strays of our national correspondence, the great bulk of that correspondence has been well and carefully disposed of: the letters and newspapers which we saw two hours ago as a mass of inextricable confusion, are now carefully stowed away in their respective bags, and not a letter or newspaper can be found. The hall clock is silently approaching the hour of eight, when the bags must all be sealed and ready to leave the place. At five minutes before that time, all is still bustle and activity; five minutes perhaps after that hour the establishment is nearly deserted. "Everything is done on military principles to minute time." "The drill and subdivisions of duties are so perfect," adds a close observer, "that the alternations are high pressure and sudden collapse." This is the more remarkable, inasmuch as the Post-Office, is subject to great variations in the amount of work to be done. Particular nights in the week, Mondays and Tuesdays for example, are known as the "heaviest," and even such events as elections, influence the labour to be performed within the same given time. During the last election for Lambeth, 40,000 circulars were posted in London in one day, and properly disposed of. On the 14th of February last, 957,000 extra letters, or valentines, passed through the Circulation Office in London. Compared with Valentine's Day 1863, there was an increase of a quarter of a million letters!

In place of the old mail-coaches waiting in the yard of the office until the work is completed inside, we have now the well-known mail-vans. As they are rapidly supplied with bags, they chase each other to the various railway stations, from which, to all points of the compass, the night-mails now depart. Half an hour afterwards, we find ourselves in one of these trains watching operations not dissimilar to those we have just left, but much more wonderful, considering how they are accomplished.

THE TRAVELLING POST-OFFICE.

The travelling post-office deserves special attention, not less on account of the interesting nature of the work performed, than because it serves many important ends in the system of which it forms a part. It is to the railway post-offices that the Department is indebted for much of the simplification of its accounts. At different points in a mail-coach journey, long stoppages used to be made in order that the "bye" and "forward" letters might get sorted; on the introduction of railways, it was seen that the number of bags must either be enormously increased, and other complications arise, or the railways could not to any extent be rendered available for post-office purposes. Just at this juncture, it was suggested that the work might be done during the journey, and the obstacles were soon surmounted. Further, by means of the travelling offices, the Post-Office is enabled to offer more time for the posting of letters, and not only so, but to give the public the benefit of earlier deliveries.

The railway-mail service has now assumed quite gigantic proportions. Twenty-six years ago, when railways were only partially used for post-office purposes, a writer predicted that they would "soon become the ne plus ultra of rapidity," and that the Post-Office would have to take to them more and more. "In a few years," said the writer, "railways will have become so general, that scarcely a mail-coach will be left in England; certainly, none will be wanted in London." Both predictions have since been verified; for the last twenty years, railways have gradually absorbed all the mail contracts,—year by year the estimates for this service showing a corresponding increase.[155] The first railway post-office journey was made on the Grand Junction Railway, between Liverpool and Birmingham, on the 1st of July, 1837. When the line was completed to London, in January, 1838, the travelling office started from the metropolis. The following curious account of the "Grand Northern Railway Post-Office," as it was called, is culled from the Penny Magazine. "On the arrival of the four 'accelerators' at the Euston Station with the mails, the railway servants immediately carry the large sacks to a huge looking machine, with a tender attached to it, both at the end of the train. This caravan is the flying Post-Office, with a table for sorting letters, and holes round the walls for their reception." The carriage was certainly either an ungainly structure, or the above is a most ungainly report. "In ten minutes," continues the narrator, "the omnibuses are emptied of their contents, and the train of carriages is then wound up to the station at Camden Town, where the engine is attached, and the Primrose Hill tunnel soon prevents us hearing the thunder of their rapid progress." The Londoner of 1864, in these days of metropolitan railways can afford to smile at this last sentence. That the change in the system of mail conveyance wrought immediate and striking improvement at the Post-Office does not admit of question. In a contemporary account, we find an interesting but wonder-stricken writer stating that "by means of the extra railway facilities, letters now pass along this line (London and Birmingham) in a space of time so inconceivably quick, that some time must elapse before our ideas become accustomed to such a rapid mode of intercourse." We learn from different works published by Mr. Charles Knight, that when the railways were extended farther northwards, the Railway Post-Office was extended with them, and was formed into sections. Thus, when the lines were continued north as far as Lancaster, there were two divisions formed, one staff of clerks, &c. to the number of eight, working between London and Birmingham, and ten between Birmingham and Lancaster.[156] There were two mails each day in both directions. The distance between London and Lancaster (241 miles) was accomplished in eleven hours and a half. The weight of the railway post-office, tender, bags, and clerks, is stated by Mr. Whishaw, in his work on railways, to have been at that period about nine tons. At that time, the expense of the service was regulated by the weight carried. At present, on the great trunk line of the London and North Western Railway Company, no fewer than eight mail-trains run daily up and down, each conveying railway post-office carriages and post-office employÉs. Half of these trains are run specially, the number of passengers being limited. The weight of mails running over this ground must have increased fourfold at the least, inasmuch as the number of officers have been augmented in even a greater proportion. Surprising as was the speed at which the first railway post-office travelled, and wonderful as it was thought at the time, one of the mail-trains now runs nearly double the distance between London and Lancaster during the time which used to be taken for that ground alone. The Limited night-mail, travelling between the Euston Square station in London, and Perth in Scotland, accomplishes the distance of 451 miles in eleven hours and a half, or about forty miles an hour including stoppages!

The railway post-office proper, is now extended over nearly every considerable line of railway in the kingdom. It comprises a number of divisions or sections, named generally from the locality through which they extend, or the railway travelled over, as the Bangor and Leeds division, the Caledonian Railway post-office. The four principal or trunk mails, three of them being divided into two sections, are (1) the North-Western Railway post-office, travelling between London and Carlisle; (2) the Irish Mail, between London and Holyhead; (3) the Great Western, between London and Exeter; and (4) the Midland, between Bristol and Newcastle-on-Tyne. Most of these divisions have day- as well as night-mails running over them daily. Four trains a-day, being two in each direction, are therefore the usual proportion of mails on the chief lines of railway. As London is the heart of the postal system, so these four principal mails may be termed its main arteries, while as veins in the great system, there are a number of smaller divisions of the railway post-office that have not been enumerated. Again, at other parts or points not important or extensive enough for travelling offices, railway trains are arranged to wait the arrival of the trunk mails; and thus, to continue the figure, our letters—the life-blood of a nation's commerce and sociality—are conveyed to the remotest corners of the country.

It may be imagined that a proper control of this vast machinery, extending through almost every county in the kingdom, with its scattered staff of officials, will be difficult; but the efficient working of the whole is nevertheless as thoroughly and promptly maintained as in any other department where personal supervision is more direct. Each divisional part has distinct officers allotted to it, the number of clerks being regulated according to the number of mails running over the division in the course of a day, and the number of sorters according to the amount of sorting duties to be performed. Each mail travels under the charge of one clerk, while each division is locally superintended by one senior clerk. The entire direction, however, of all the travelling officers is vested in the Inspector-General of Mails, who also presides over the Mail Office at St. Martin's-le-Grand. We may here further state, that the length of the divisions—the extent of one of which forms a post-office journey or "trip"—varies slightly, averaging about 170 miles; the average time taken to perform the journeys being between five and six hours. As a rule, the night-mails travel during the night-time, or between eight P.M. and six A.M.; the day-mails generally speaking throughout the day.

But we must make ready for our journey, and enter more into detail. While van after van is arriving with its heavy loads of mail-bags, we have time to notice that the train standing at the great London terminus is nearly all post-office. Two or three carriages are being filled as full as possible with made-up bags, and two more, fitted up like post-offices, are simply meant for operations similar to those we have already seen at the General Post-Office, in connexion with the unfinished work which has now to be accomplished during the journey. It is with the remaining carriage only that we have to do. Seen from the outside, the office itself may still answer to the description given of it twenty-five years ago by our authority above adverted to, although considerable improvements must have been made in its construction since that time. Though the structure is built with a very evident serviceable purpose, the large, heavily-painted, windowless vehicle, looks more as if intended for the conveyance of Her Majesty's horses than Her Majesty's mails; the roof, however, covered with glass, with other contrivances for the purposes of ventilation, soon convinces us that it is intended for some description of the genus homo. We go inside, and find it built like an ordinary saloon carriage, about twenty-two feet long, and as wide and spacious as the railway arrangements will allow. It is night-time, the reader will remember, and the interior looks warm and cheerful with its row of bright-burning moderator lamps, and, in this respect, contrasts strongly and pleasantly, as far as we are concerned, with the dimly-lighted station, through which the cold night air is rushing. The reader who is following us in this description must abstain from imagining anything like luxury in the internal fittings. Everything here is requisite for accomplishing the work in hand, but there is no provision for any kind of indulgence; and spacious as the place seems at a first glance, there is not to be found, when we come to look narrowly, a single foot of spare room. Along the whole length of one side of the carriage, and encroaching materially upon its width, a number of tiers of boxes—the "holes" of our ancient authority—are arranged for the sorting processes; the smaller ones for the letters, and the larger ones in the centre of the office—more like shelves, many of them being movable—for the newspapers and all that vast variety of articles forwarded according to the rules of book-post. Every available inch of space on the other side of the office is covered with upright pegs, in recesses sunk in the carriage-sides, upon which are hung the bags—now made of canvas, with the names of towns conspicuously painted upon them—to be used in the course of the journey. These recesses, as well as the two ends of the office, are well padded over, to secure additional safety to the officers in the event of any accident.[157] Under the desks or counters, which run from one end of the carriage to the other, bags are packed, to be given out as the train arrives at the respective stations.

In less time, however, than it would take to read the foregoing, the mail has speeded miles away, and reached, by this time, the fox-covers and game-preserves of those Hertfordshire landowners who, when the railway was projected, expressed the wish that its concoctors "were at rest in Paradise!" The train possibly "thundered" through Camden Town as it used to do in olden times, but it would be but a momentary sensation, not to speak of the inhabitants being now quite accustomed to it. The post-office work commenced when the train left the station. The bags were quickly seized by the proper sorter, cut, and their contents turned out on the desk. Then he distributes what he finds in the bags according to a pre-arranged order. The registered letters which have found their way to the office he at once transfers to the clerk on duty whose special province it is to deal with them; the bundles of ordinary letters—in one of which packets is the identical letter we ourselves posted—he hands over to his fellow-sorters, who, each standing opposite to a distinct set of boxes, labelled with the names of different towns on the route, at once sort them away. The newspapers he deals with himself. The work thus started, the scene presently becomes one of considerable animation and a pleasant-enough sort of excitement, till every bundle of letters is cut open and disposed of in the boxes. There is then a lull, but it is only temporary. It is true that the train will not stop till the county of Warwickshire is reached; but the intervening country is provided for nevertheless—arrangements having been made that at all the towns we pass the exchange of letter-bags shall be effected by means of machinery whilst the train is progressing at its usual speed. The contrivance in question deserves minute description.[158] The machinery is not worked in the post-office, but in an adjoining van. By means, however, of a substantial iron gangway, the two carriages are connected, so that we can pass easily from one to the other and see the operation itself. As we do so we are evidently nearing some town, for the sorter is at that moment engaged in peering out of the window into the darkness in search of some familiar object, such as bridge, river, or cluster of trees, by means of which he is enabled to tell his whereabouts with almost mathematical precision. Whilst he is busy finding his position we will take the time to explain, that the machinery is arranged so as to secure, simultaneously in most cases, both the receipt and the despatch of bags. For the purpose of receiving bags, a large strong net is fixed to one side of the van, to be drawn down at the proper moment; and close to the door, on each side of it, securely fixed to the carriage, are hollow iron bars, inside each of which, working by means of a rope and pulley, an iron arm is fixed, upon which the bags to be delivered, securely strapped in a thick, leathern pouch, are suspended. Where the exchange has to be effected at the station we are nearing, the arrangements are just the counterparts of this. A net is spread to catch each pouch from the extended arm of the carriage, and pouches are hung from iron standards in the ground of sufficient height for the net in the train. The operation itself is just commencing. The door is pushed back into the groove in which it works, and then the sorter, touching a spring that holds up the net, it is loosened from its supports, and projects over the carriage-sides; the iron arm, acting on its pulley-rope, is drawn round into the carriage, where the pouch is rapidly fastened to it by means of a catch or spring—but in such a manner that a touch from the net-apparatus at the station will bring it off—and then let down, remaining by virtue of its own weight at right angles to the door. A moment of waiting, and then all the machinery acts its assigned part properly; the pouch disappears from the arm (or arms, if the bags have been heavy enough for two to be used), and at the same moment another descends into the post-office net, and all is over and quiet as before. We mean, of course, comparative quiet, as much as is possible amid the din and endless rattle of a train speeding at the rate of forty miles an hour.

We follow the sorter as he makes his way back into the post-office carriage, carrying with him the treasures we have watched him pick up by the wayside. These new arrivals disposed of in the orthodox way, and the process repeated two or three times, there is suddenly a movement among the officers as they busy themselves in collecting from the different boxes all the letters that have been received from first to last for the bags about to be despatched at the approaching town—the first junction station. The letters in question are examined to test the correctness of the sorting, then tied up in bundles in a sharp and decisive way, then placed away carefully in the several bags, which are tied, sealed, and ready for delivery just as the train is brought to a stand. Here they are given out; fresh supplies are received from a number of large towns in the immediate district, and the train is again on its way. The bags received are at once opened; the same round of sorting, collecting, examining, is gone through; the same process of despatching for the next and all subsequent postal stages is repeated, just as we have described. Little variation is noticed, except that at certain points a much larger number of bags are thrown into the office—for instance, as the train nears the more thickly populated parts of the midland counties, then the "black country," as it is called, and subsequently the manufacturing districts. At one of these points a considerable addition was made to the staff of sorters, who fell at once to work in the vacant spaces left for them. And it was not before they were required; for presently the train arrives at one of the principal mail junctions in the kingdom, where an immense number of bags wait our arrival. These bags have been brought somewhat earlier on, by other mail trains, arranged so as to effect a junction with us; these having in their turn met with other trains running across the country in transverse directions. Thus there are here, bags from towns near and towns remote, containing letters for places from which we are, as yet, hundreds of miles distant. The work, however, will be resumed with increased activity, according to the number of letters which may be forthcoming, only whatever number there may be, all must be finished in a given time. So far, the reader may imagine the duty to be one of dull routine and very monotonous; so as a rule we believe it is: there are circumstances connected with the manner of travelling, however, which conspire to make it at times somewhat varied and exceptional. One moment, and we are clattering down a hill, and the sorting partakes, to some extent, of the same tear-away speed; another time, we are panting up a line of steep gradient, and the letters find their boxes very deliberately; now, the rails are somewhat out of order, or the coupling of the carriages has not been well attended to, or we are winding round a succession of sharp curves, and can scarcely keep our feet as the carriage lurches first to one side, then to the other; in all which cases, not only is our own equilibrium a source of difficulty to us, but we see that things proceed anything but smoothly among the letters, which refuse to go in at all, or go in with a spirited evolution, fluttering outside, and then landing at their destination upside down, or in some other way transgressing official rules in such case made and provided. Then the work is accompanied to the different kinds of music, well known to "express travellers." Now the train is tearing away through a tunnel, or through an interminably long cutting of thick-ribbed stone, and then under or over a bridge. Nor is this all, nor the worst: these noises are very frequently varied by what is anything but a lively tune on the engine whistle, but which, supposing the signal lights to be against us, or Cerberus asleep at his post, is too often a round of screeching and screaming enough to waken the Seven Sleepers.

Whatever be the general character of the work, we are bent on enjoyment during this particular journey. The country through which the train is now proceeding is but thinly supplied with towns, hence the number of letters received is much smaller, and we may avail ourselves of the opportunity which this break in the character of the duty gives us, to examine more closely and from our own point of view, a few of the letters which are waiting to be despatched. The sorters also, glad of a little relaxation, have produced from their hiding places under the blue cloth-covered counter, an oval kind of swing-seat attached to it, which turns outside somewhat ingeniously upon a swivel, and seat themselves at their work.

Undoubtedly, the first thing which will strike an observer placed in circumstances like ours, is, that the Post-Office is eminently a democratic establishment, conducted on the most improved fraternitÉ et ÉgalitÉ principles. The same sort of variety that marks society, here marks its letters; envelopes of all shades and sizes; handwriting of all imaginable kinds, written in all shades of ink, with every description of pen; names the oddest, and names the most ordinary, and patronymics to which no possible exception can be taken. Then to notice the seals. Here is one envelope stamped with the escutcheoned signet of an earl; another where the wax has yielded submissively to the initials of plain John Brown; and yet another, plastered with cobbler's wax, with an impression that makes no figure in Burke or Debrett, but which, indeed, bears many evidences of having been manufactured with hob-nails. Then to think that Queen Victoria, and John Brown, and the cobbler aforesaid, must each find the inevitable Queen's head, without which no letter of high or low degree can pass unquestioned! Here they are—these letters—mingling for a few hours at any rate in silent but common fellowship, tossed about in company, belaboured with the self-same knocks on the head, sent to their destination locked in loving embrace, and sometimes, as in the case of the cobbler's, exceedingly difficult to part.

If we turn to consider the addresses, how amusing we find some in their ambiguity; how blundering and stupid a few more! Some say too little, others too much; some give the phonetic system with malice prepense, others because it is nature's own rendering and they have never known school! Sometimes (and the practice is growing) the envelope is covered with long advertisements, for the benefit and information of the Post-Office officials, we presume, in which case it is difficult to arrive at the proper address of the letter at the first or even second glance. Some give the address of the sender in prominent printed characters, and it is surely not a matter of wonder when the letter, as not unfrequently, happens, finds its way back to the sender. In all cases of this kind, time is of course lost to the Post-Office, and the work of examination is necessarily deliberate, hesitating, and slow. At one point, the quota of letters from the sister-isle is received, and it is then perhaps that the sorter's patience is put to the severest test. The addresses of the letters of the poorer Irish are generally so involved—always being sent to the care of one or two individuals—that they usually present the appearance of a little wilderness of words. As a specimen of the kind of letter referred to, we give our readers a copy of one which actually passed through the Post-Office some time ago, assuring them that though the following is rather an ultra specimen, this kind of minute but indefinite address is by no means uncommon among the class referred to:—

The English poor oftener, as we have already seen, show their unbounded confidence in the sagacity of the officers of the Post-Office by leaving out some essential part of the address of a letter, but very seldom writing too much. We once saw a letter addressed as follows:—"Mary H——, a tall woman with two children," and giving the name of a large town in the West of England.

The Scotch people, as a rule, attain the golden mean, and exhibit the greatest care in such matters. Nor can we wonder at this. The poorer classes are certainly better educated, and whilst seldom profuse on their letters, they are cautious enough not to leave anything of consequence unwritten. The statistics of the Dead Letter Offices of the three countries confirm, to some considerable extent, our rough generalizations.

After all, however, the cases of blunder are exceptional; and as no really blind letters are found in the travelling offices, because no letters are posted here, little difficulty is felt, comparatively speaking, and nothing but patience and the Rosetta stone of experience are needed for the performance of the duty. The great majority of letters are like the great majority of people—ordinary, unexceptionable, and mediocre. It could not well be otherwise. In the railway post-office, however, much is learned from the habit of association. The officers, of course, take some degree of interest in the towns on his ride; for, almost domesticated on the rail, he becomes a sort of denizen of those towns he is constantly passing, and sees, or fancies he does, from the letters that arrive from them, a kind of corroboration of all he has settled in his mind with regard to them. Almost every town has its distinctive kind of letters. That town we just passed is manufacturing, and the letters are almost entirely confined to sober-looking advice-cards, circulars, prices current, and invoices, generally very similar in kind and appearance, in good-sized envelopes, with very plainly written or printed addresses. Now and then a lawyer's letter, written in a painfully distinct hand, or a thick, fat, banker's letter, groaning under the weight of bills and notes, escapes from company such as we have described; but still the letters sustain the town's real character. Now we are at an old country town, with quiet-going people, living as their fathers did before them, and inheriting not only their money and lands, but their most cherished principles: their letters are just as we expected, little, quiet, old-fashioned-looking things, remarkable for nothing so much as their fewness. Now we are among the coal-districts, and almost all the letters have a smudged appearance, making you imagine that they must have been written by the light of pit-candles, in some region of carbon "two hundred fathoms down." This bag comes from a sea-bathing place, and so long as summer continues, will unmistakably remind you of sea-shore, sea-sand, and sea-anemones. These bags have previously had to cross a broad sea ferry, and the letters tell of salt water as certainly as if they were so many fishes. Another twenty miles, and we come to an old cathedral town with its letters looking as orthodox as any Convocation could wish; whilst that other town is clearly a resort of fashion, if we may judge from the finely scented, perfumed, elegant-looking billets that escape from its post-bag.

And thus interested and observing, we are rapidly reaching our destination. We are at the terminus at last. The office is emptied of all its contents, and the bags, securely made up, are forwarded under care of other officers in different trains, proceeding far and near. Nor have we forgotten our own letter. In the vast mass of letters it holds a well-secured place, being safely ensconced in one of these very bags; and we will endeavour to be present when the bag is opened, that we may verify our assertion. Out of the carriage and once on terra firma, we feel a sensation of dreamy wonder that nothing has happened to us; that, considering the noise and the whirl, and the excitement of the work we have witnessed, our brain is not tied up in a knot somewhere in the head, instead of only swimming. Dusty, tired, and sleepy, we hurry through the streets for refreshment, if not repose, while the day is just breaking.

Of course, this Post-Office machinery, which we have attempted to describe, is necessarily delicate and liable to derangements, inasmuch as it has to depend to a great extent on the proper carrying out throughout the country of an infinite number of railway arrangements. Its successful working is doubtless primarily due to the special time chosen for the conveyance of mails. The ordinary traffic disposed of, the mail-trains take its place, and through the long night the best part of the Post-Office work is accomplished. The good or bad management of railway companies may assist or retard the efficiency of the Post-Office to an almost incalculable extent. The railway post-office is like a gigantic machine, one part interdependent on another, and all alike dependent on the motive power of the different contracting parties. Railway accidents are fruitful sources of discomfiture to the Post-Office Department. The mail-trains have, within the last two or three years, enjoyed an immunity from any very serious calamity of this nature: yet even when this is not the case, it very seldom happens that the Post-Office arrangements suffer, except on the particular journey wherein the accident occurred. Fresh supplies of men and matÉriel are summoned with a speed that would, or ought to, surprise some other commissariat departments, and the work proceeds the next day or night as if the equilibrium had never been disturbed.

As the question whether continual railway travelling is prejudicial to health has frequently been discussed of late, it may not be out of place to instance the case of the travelling employÉs of the Post-Office, which seems to show that persons in the enjoyment of good health are benefited by railway travelling. The ratio of sickness among the Post-Office clerks and sorters engaged upon railways is certainly not greater, we are told, than among the same class of officers employed at the London establishment. The fact seems to be that, were it not that the former travel generally at night-time, are exposed to sudden changes of weather, and are, on certain emergencies, forced to travel oftener and further than the authorized limits, the ratio would be considerably less than it is. Dr. Waller Lewis, the medical officer of the Post-Office, supplies us, in a recent report, with a number of cases that have come under his immediate notice, where incessant, and even excessive railway travelling, does not seem to have been at all detrimental to the health of those so engaged. "One of our best officers," says Dr. Lewis, "states that he has no doubt that, during the period of twenty years that he has been engaged in railway duties, he travelled, on an average, a hundred miles a-day, Sundays included. All this time he not only enjoyed excellent health, but he was stouter and stronger than he has been since leaving that duty." Dr. Lewis further tells us, that it is part of his duty to examine candidates for appointment in this department of the public service, and again to examine them after they have undergone a probation varying from six to eighteen months. "In reply to my question, addressed to such officers after a probationary term, of how they found the travelling agree with them, some stated that they had never been so well in their lives. A considerable number of them replied that they had not had an hour's illness since they commenced railway duty." Of course, these last-mentioned persons were candidates for appointments in a lucrative branch of the Post-Office, and their statements must be received subject to this understanding and with due caution: still, it seems certain that the general testimony borne in the travelling offices is not unfavourable to the healthiness of the employment.

With regard to the question of injury to the eyesight from railway travelling, Dr. Lewis may again be supposed to speak authoritatively when he considers "it very injurious to allow the eyes to rest on external objects near at hand, such as telegraph-poles or wires, near trees or hedges, &c. whilst the train is in motion;" but, speaking of the same subject, he "does not find that in the travelling post-office much mischief is occasioned to the sight."[159] When we remember that the Post-Office work is generally performed by means of a strong artificial light, and much tedious deciphering of the addresses of letters necessarily occurs, as we have seen, during travelling, it must be admitted that the eyesight is here put to the strongest possible test.

We have now traced our letter, posted in the metropolis, through the travelling post-office into the establishment of a provincial town. We shall follow it presently, and not leave it till it is properly delivered at the rural village to which we saw it addressed; but we must take the opportunities as they occur to describe with minuteness each particular, whether bearing directly or collaterally on our subject, as well as to add now and then a timely exhortation to the reader. Thus, you are indignant, perhaps, that a certain letter you ought to have had is not to hand at the proper moment, but has suffered some delay in transit. However, just think how many letters you do get, which come to your desk as true as the needle to the pole. Just listen to the old gentleman yonder as he tells how long the same business letter from a certain old-established house used to be in arriving, and what was paid for it when it did arrive. Above all, pray think of the travelling caged officials—those wingless birds of the Post-Office—and of what they go through o' nights in order that you may have your letter or your newspaper—posted yesterday in some quiet corner of the country 500 or 600 miles away—with your buttered toast to breakfast in town!

A PROVINCIAL POST-OFFICE.

Thirty years ago the arrangements in the north country town of the district to which our imaginary letter was addressed, and which we are engaged to visit, were of the most primitive kind. It has always been an important town. Even anterior to the first establishment of the British Post-Office, it was the first town in the county in which it stands. Subsequently, it was on the direct line of one of the principal mail-routes in the kingdom, and now, in these days of railroads, it is a kind of junction for the district. Postally speaking, it was, and is, a place of importance, including within its boundaries nearly a hundred villages, all deriving their letter-sustenance from it. At the period of time in question the post-office was situated in the most central part of the town, the outside of the building partaking of the ugly and old-fashioned style of the shops of that day. It was then considered quite sufficient for the business of the place that there should be a small room of about twelve feet square devoted to postal purposes; that there should be a long counter, upon which the letters might be stamped and charged, and a small set of letter-boxes for the sorting processes. Added, however, to the proper business of the neighbourhood, there used to be a kind of work done here which was confined to a few towns only on the line of mails, selected for this supplementary business on account of their central positions. The mail-coaches, as they passed and repassed northwards and southwards, stopped here for half an hour until certain necessary sorting operations could be performed with a portion of the letters. In this way our particular town held the style and designation, and with it the prestige, of a "Forwarding Office."

The public required little attention, and got but little. Being prior to the time of postage-stamps, and we may almost add of money-orders, not to speak of savings' bank business, few applications were ever made to the officers—consisting of a postmaster, his wife, and another clerk—for anything but stray scraps of information relative to the despatch of mails. The communication with the public was anything but close, being conducted in this town—and, in fact, in all others of our acquaintance—through a trap-door in a wooden pane in the office-window. Near to it was a huge slit, being a passage to a basket, into which letters and newspapers were promiscuously thrown. The principal labour incident to the old style of postage was in regulating the amount to be paid on the different letters. Those posted in the town for the town itself were delivered for a penny; twopence was charged into the country places surrounding; letters for the metropolis cost a shilling; and Scotch letters eightpence-halfpenny at least, the odd halfpenny being the charge as a toll for the letter crossing the Tweed. The delivery of the letters in the town took place at any time during the day, according to the arrival of the mails, and it was effected by a single letter-carrier.[160] Private boxes for the principal merchants in the town, and private bags for the country gentlemen, were almost indispensable to those who cared for the proper despatch and security of their correspondence. Many gentlemen who did not arrange to have private bags (at a great yearly expense) were compelled to make frequent journeys to the town to ascertain if any letters had arrived for them. Some letters for places within a few miles of the town would be known to be at the office for days and weeks unguessed at, till perhaps some one would hear, through one of many channels, that a letter was lying at the post-office for persons of their acquaintance, and inform them of the fact. Letter-delivering in the rural districts was then a private concern, and, in consequence, those letters destined for one particular road were laid aside till a sufficient number were accumulated to make it worth while to convey them at a charge of a penny the letter.[161] Owing to the wretched system then in force, many country places round a post-office were, to all intents and purposes, more remote than most foreign countries are at this hour. One letter-carrier sufficing for the wants of the town, we need scarcely say that the number of letters received was exceedingly small. Not more than a hundred letters were posted or delivered, on an average, each day, though the town was the seat of many brisk manufactories, and was, besides, in the heart of the colliery districts. Now, a single firm in the same town will cause a greater amount of daily postal business.

Our purpose will not allow of our describing all the attendant circumstances of the state of things existing at this early period, or more fully than we have already done the postal arrangements of the past. But there were the "expresses," which ought not to be forgotten. Designed to supply some sudden emergency, they were of great use where quick intelligence was urgently required. For this purpose they might be had from the post-office people at any hour, and generally they were procured through the night. A special mounted messenger might be despatched, under this arrangement, with a single letter, marked "Haste! post haste!" carrying with him a way-bill, to account for the time it had taken him to perform the journey. The charge for expresses was at the rate of a shilling a mile, the speed at which they travelled averaging ten miles an hour.

Nor can we stay, much as we should like to do so, to picture the old mail-coach—its glittering appearance, its pawing horses; or to describe the royal-liveried guard, "grand and awful-looking in all the composure of a felt superiority." In the old times it used to pull up at the half-wooden inn near the post-office, and, during the half-hour allowed for postal business, was the observed of all observers. The half-hour was one of unusual bustle both at the office and at the inn; but, as soon as the time was up, the passengers would take their seats (the guard occupying a solitary one at the end of the coach), the mails were thrown as a small addition to the load of bags at the top, and off the cavalcade would start, to the tune, perhaps, of the "Blue Bells of Scotland," if the mail was going northwards, or, if southwards, may be "The Green Hills of Tyrol," from the clear silver key-bugle of his Majesty's mail-guard.

Now, this is changed, and almost all postal arrangements prior to the days of Sir Rowland Hill are as so many things of the past. And into what a grand establishment the Post-Office itself is metamorphosed! The part now dedicated to the public might be part of a first-class banking establishment. Entering by a spacious doorway, with a lofty vestibule, there is accommodation for a score of people to stand in the ante-room and leisurely transact their business. Then there runs along the whole length of the first or public room a substantial mahogany counter, behind which the clerks stand to answer inquiries and attend to the ordinary daily business. There is a desk for the money-order clerk, and drawers in which postage-stamps are kept. Close by we see one or two ranges of boxes; one for callers' letters—"the poste restante"—and another for those who prefer to engage private boxes to having their letters delivered by letter-carriers.

Outside things are changed also. The wooden pane—nay, the window itself—has disappeared to make way for a more modern structure; and instead of the single letterbox, there are several. Late letters are now provided for in a separate box, and so also are newspapers. The principal post-office work is accomplished in an interior apartment, from which the public are studiously excluded.[162] A large table stands in the centre of the room; a smaller one, well padded with leather, stands near, and is used specially for letter-stamping; a number of letter-benches—for boxes are not used much now—are arranged against three of the four walls and in the middle of the room, on which the letters and newspapers are sorted. Empty canvas bags of different sizes, with tin labels attached (if the name of the town is not painted on them), books, printed papers of different kinds, bundles of string, &c. make up the furniture of the apartment, and complete the appearance of it immediately prior to the receipt of the early-morning mail.

Long before the ordinary workmen in our towns are summoned from their repose, the Post-Office work in the provinces may be said to commence by the mail-cart clattering through the now silent streets to the railway station, there to await the arrival of the first and principal mail, and its first daily instalment of bags. At the given time, and only (even in the depth of winter) very occasionally late, the train emerges out of the darkness, its two shining lamps in front, into the silent and almost empty station. The process described in our account of the travelling post-office is here gone through; a rapid exchange of bags is made, and each interest goes its separate and hurried way. During the interval, and just before the mail-cart deposits its contents at the door of the post-office, the clerks and letter-carriers will have been roused from their beds, and somewhat sulkily, perhaps, have found their places in time. They look sleepy and dull, but this is excusable; the hour is a drowsy one, and half the world is dozing. The well-known sound of the mail-cart breaks the spell, however, and soon they are all thoroughly alive, nay, even interested, in the duties in which they are engaged. The bags just arrived are immediately seized by one of their number, who hurriedly cuts their throats, and then empties the contents upon the huge table in a great heap: somewhere in the heap our letter is safely deposited. The bundles of letters are quickly taken to the letter-stampers, through whose hands they must first pass. With a speed and accuracy which rivals machinery,[163] an agile letter-stamper will soon impress a copy of the dated stamp of the office upon the back of a hundred letters, and this done, they are passed over to the clerks and sorters to arrange them in the different boxes, the process being repeated till the whole are disposed of. The newspapers and book-packets are taken from the table without being stamped, and sorted by the letter-carriers. As soon as the first or preliminary sorting is over, each sorter will proceed upon distinctive duties; some will prepare the letters for the letter-carriers, by sorting each man's letters together, according to their different number. When this is done, the letters are handed to the carriers, who retire to a separate room, looking with its desks very like a small schoolroom, and there arrange them in order to deliver them from house to house. Other officers will prepare the letters for the sub-officers and rural messengers. When all the letters, &c. for a certain village are gathered up, they are counted and tied up in bundles; if any charged letters are sent, the amount is debited against the sub-postmaster of the place on a letter-bill—something like an invoice—which invariably accompanies every Post-Office letter-bag despatched from one post-town to another, or from one head office to a sub-office. If any registered letters are of the number to be sent, the name of each addressee is carefully written on the letter-bill. Private and locked bags for the country gentry still survive, and may be obtained for an annual fee of two guineas. They are attended to with some care, and are carried to their destination with the other made-up bags. When the mails are ready, they are sent from the Post-Office in various ways. Those for one or two country roads are sent to a local railway station, and taken in charge by the railway guard, who drops the bags at the different points on the line according to their address; others are carried by mail gigs under one or more private contractors, while the rest are taken by country-walking postmen, who make certain journeys during the day, returning in the evening with the letters and bags they have gathered during their travels. Of course the rural messengers take out loose letters as well; e. g. those for detached dwellings on their line of road. Our letter falls into the hands of one of those hard-working and deserving men.[164] The village, or rather hamlet, to which it is addressed is too small for a post-office, but a rural postman passes through it on his daily journeyings about ten o'clock each morning, delivering with scrupulous fidelity everything committed to his care. Thus, posted where we saw it last night, it passes from hand to hand all through the long night, and eventually reaches that hand for which it was intended 300 odd miles away, nearly as surely as if we had travelled to deliver it ourselves.

But to return. While some of the officers are attending in this way to the wants of the country, others are serving the interests of the town. A hundred or two gentlemen, bankers and manufacturers, pay an extra guinea yearly in order to secure certain special privileges at the Post-Office. These privileges consist, in brief, of having their letters arranged in private boxes, each labelled with their names, and delivered from these boxes by one of the clerks as soon as the office is opened, or the moment the letter-carriers emerge from it to enter upon any of the daily deliveries of letters. Of course these letters must be prepared previously.

The office is open to the public for money-orders and for the transaction of the business of the new savings' banks at nine o'clock, and continues open on every day, except Saturdays, until six, on which day two hours longer are allowed. It is not necessary to describe the arrangements in these branches, seeing that the public are familiar from daily experience with them. It will suffice to say that separate clerks are usually delegated to these duties in our large towns, and are answerable to the postmaster for the correctness of their accounts. The same clerk attends to the sale of postage-stamps, keeping an account with the postmaster of the quantity sold, and also of the stamps bought from the public under the recent arrangement. In larger towns where one clerk is specially retained for these duties, he is known as the "window clerk," as it devolves upon him to answer all applications and inquiries.

Throughout the day, the quietness of the post-office proper is broken in upon and varied by the arrival of some small mail. On one of these occasions, namely, on the receipt of the day-mail from London, the operations of the morning are gone over again on a small scale, and for a short time the office presents an appearance of some of its early bustle. Letters are delivered in the town, but those arriving for the country places remain at the office till the next morning.

The work of the Post-Office commences before "grey dawn," and long before the usual period of ordinary business in our towns; it lasts also far into the "dewy eve." When merchants lock up their desks and offices, and complete their last round of duties by posting their letters, the serious work of the Post-Office, for the second time during the day, may be said to begin. The hour before the despatch of the principal mail in any provincial Post-Office, thanks in great part to the dilatoriness of the public in general, is an hour of busy activity, seldom witnessed in any other branch of industry whatever. Almost at the same moment the country mail-gigs from their different rides, mail-carts from the local railway stations, the rural postmen from their walks, and the receiving-house keepers from the outskirts of the town, approach the post-office door, and speedily cause the office to groan as it were under the weight of letters and bags. All the force of the office is now engaged, and engaged with a will, if the bags are to be ready for the London night-mail due from Scotland at the railway station in sixty minutes. Again, the same round of bag-opening, checking, stamping (only now the stamps must be obliterated, as the letters are about to be despatched for the first time), and sorting, which we described in the morning, is again repeated. The sorted letters are examined, tied up in bundles of sixty or seventy each, and then despatched in the bags received at the beginning of the day from the London mail. The bags are tied, sealed, and hurried away to the station. Now, at length, the postmaster and his staff breathe freely. For a full hour they have been engaged as busily, yet as silently, as so many bees in a hive; but now that the work is finished, the thoughts of rogues, lovers, bankers, lawyers, clergymen, and shopkeepers; the loves and griefs, the weal and woes, of the town and country lie side by side, and for a few hours at least will enjoy the most complete and secret companionship. Every working day, and to some extent on Sunday, the same routine of work is prescribed and accomplished with little variation.

In all this consists the prose of Post-Office life; but who shall describe its poetry? Scarcely a day passes in any of our provincial post-offices without some incident occurring calculated to surprise, amuse, or sadden. Very probably within a few minutes one person will have come to make a complaint that a certain letter or letters ought to have arrived, and must have been kept back; another will make an equally unreasonable request, or propound some strange inquiry which the poor post-office clerk is supposed to be omniscient enough to answer. Most often, however, the cases of inquiry disclose sorrowful facts, and all the consolation which can be offered—supposing that the clerk has any of "the milk of human kindness" in him, a quality of mind or heart, much too rare, we confess, in the Post-Office service—will likely be the consolation of hope. The official sees now and then brief snatches of romance; perhaps the beginning or the end, though seldom the transaction throughout. Amusing circumstances are often brought out by requests tendered at the Post-Office, that letters which have been posted may be returned to the writers. A formal, but most essential rule, makes letters once posted the property of the Postmaster-General until they are delivered as addressed, and must not be given up to the writers on any pretence whatever. One or two requests of this kind related to us we are not likely soon to forget. On one occasion, a gentlemanly-looking commercial traveller called at an office and expressed a fear that he had inclosed two letters in wrong envelopes, the addresses of which he furnished. It appeared from the account which he reluctantly gave, after a refusal to grant his request, that his position and prospects depended upon his getting his letters, and correcting the mistakes, inasmuch as they revealed plans which he had adopted to serve two mercantile houses in the same line of business, whose interests clashed at every point. He failed to get his letters, but we hope he has retrieved himself, and is now serving one master faithfully.

Another case occurred in which a fast young gentleman confessed to carrying on a confidential correspondence with two young ladies at the same time, and that he had, or feared he had, crossed two letters which he had written at the same sitting. We heartily hope a full exposure followed. Writing of this, we are reminded of a case where a country postmaster had a letter put into his hand through the office window, together with the following message delivered with great emphasis: "Here's a letter; she wants it to go along as fast as it can, cause there's a feller wants to have her here, and she's courted by another feller that's not here, and she wants to know whether he is going to have her or not." If the letter was as explicit as the verbal message to which the postmaster involuntarily lent his ear, no doubt the writer would not be long in suspense. These cases, however, are uninteresting compared to one related by another postmaster. A tradesman's daughter who had been for some time engaged to a prosperous young draper in a neighbouring town, heard from one whom she and her parents considered a creditable authority, that he was on the verge of bankruptcy. "Not a day was to be lost in breaking the bond by which she and her small fortune were linked to penury." A letter, strong and conclusive in its language, was at once written and posted, when the same informant called upon the young lady's friends to contradict and explain his previous statement, which had arisen out of some misunderstanding. "They rushed at once to the Post-Office, and no words can describe the scene; the reiterated appeals, the tears, the wringing of hands, the united entreaties of father, mother, and daughter for the restoration of the fatal letter." But the rule admitted of no exception, and the young lady had to repent at leisure of her inordinate haste.

We have only space to close with a graphic extract from the reminiscences of a post-office official, in which the everyday life of a country post-office is admirably described: "For the poor we were often persuaded both to read and write their letters; and the Irish especially, with whom penmanship was a rare accomplishment, seldom failed to succeed in their eloquent petitions; though no one can realize the difficulty of writing from a Paddy's dictation, where 'the pratees, and the pig, and the praiste, God bless him!' become involved in one long, perplexed sentence, without any period from beginning to end of the letter. One such epistle, the main topic of which was an extravagant lamentation over the death of a wife, rose to the pathetic climax, 'and now I'm obleeged to wash meself, and bake meself!'" The officers of the Dead-Letter Office could a tale unfold, one would think, only an essential rule of the service binds them to honourable secresy. The Post-Office official often, however, and in spite of himself, learns more than he cares to know. "For," as the writer continues, "a great deal can be known from the outside of a letter, where there is no disposition to pry into the enclosure. Who would not be almost satisfied with knowing all the correspondence coming to or leaving the hands of the object of his interest? From our long training among the letters of our district, we knew the handwriting of most persons so intimately, that no attempt at disguise, however cunningly executed, could succeed with us. We noticed the ominous lawyers' letters addressed to tradesmen whose circumstances were growing embarrassed; and we saw the carefully ill-written direction to the street in Liverpool and London, where some poor fugitive debtor was in hiding. The evangelical curate, who wrote in a disguised hand and under an assumed name to the fascinating public singer, did not deceive us; the young man who posted a circular love-letter to three or four girls the same night, never escaped our notice; the wary maiden, prudently keeping two strings to her bow, unconsciously depended upon our good faith. The public never know how much they owe to official secresy and official honour, and how rarely this confidence is betrayed. Petty tricks and artifices, small dishonesties, histories of tyranny and suffering, exaggerations and disappointments were thrust upon our notice. As if we were the official confidants of the neighbourhood, we were acquainted with the leading events in the lives of most of the inhabitants."

Once more, "Never, surely, has any one a better chance of seeing himself as others see him than a country postmaster. Letters of complaint very securely enveloped and sealed passed through our hands, addressed to the Postmaster-General, and then came back to us for our own perusal and explanation. One of our neighbours informed the Postmaster-General, in confidence, that we were 'ignorant and stupid.' A clergyman wrote a pathetic remonstrance, stating that he was so often disappointed of his Morning Star and Dial, that he had come to the conclusion that we disapproved of that paper for the clergy,[165] and, from scruples of conscience, or political motives, prevented it—one of 400 passing daily through our office—from reaching his hands whenever there was anything we considered objectionable in it."

[154] The letters are also counted as they are struck with the stamp.