Humour Of The Post Office.

HUMOUR OF THE POST OFFICE .

MY readers will be familiar with an incident related in the Scriptures , where is recorded the usefulness of the first direct , although at the same time very humble messenger . I mean that of the dove sent out of the Ark by Noah , which returned to him carrying an olive leaf in its mouth . This was directly after the forty days' rain which caused the great deluge . Noah , in order to ascertain the degree to which the waters had subsided ,

sent out a raven in the first instance , but this bird , probably finding food on the surface on the waters , did not re-enter the Ark . A dove was twice used for the same purpose , the second time after an interval of seven days , when upon her return she brought him welcome news , for " Lo , in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off ; so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth . "

On the other hand , the reader may not remember that it was Jezebel , wife of Ahab , King of Samaria , who dispatched the first circular letter , being actuated in this by the basest and most despicable of motives , tho story of which is given in the First Book of Kings xxi . 7-11 . It appears that the cupidity of Ahab was aroused at the sight of a vineyard situated near to his palace , the owner of which was a subject called Naboth . The king wished to attach this vineyard to his own royal grounds ; but supported by the law of

Moses which forbade a man to part with his paternal inheritance unless under special circumstances , Naboth refused to dispose of it on any pretence whatever . Jezebel , who was determined that her husband should possess the coveted vineyard , not only urged him to use his kingly perogative , but was guilty of deep treachery which cost Naboth his life . This-is the Biblical account : — " And Jezebel his wife said unto him ( Ahab ) , 'Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel ? Arise and eat breadand let thine

, heart be merry : I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite . ' So she wrote letters in Ahab ' s name , and sealed them with his seal , and sent the letters unto the elders and to the nobles that were in his city , dwelling with Naboth ( i . e ., residing in the same city ) . And she wrote in the letters saying , ' Proclaim a fast , and set Naboth on high among the people . And

set two men , sons of Belial before him , to bear witness against him , saying , Thou didst blaspheme God and the king . And then carry him out and stone him , that he may die . ' And the men of his city , even the elders , and the nobles who were the inhabitants in his city , did as Jezebel had sent unto them , and as it was written in the letters which she had sent unto them . "

Herodotus , called the father of profane history , and who wrote several hundred years after Moses , in relating the conspiracy of Harpagus , King of Media , says that Harpagus communicated his intentions to Cyrus in a letter , which , as all the roads leading to Persia were guarded by the king ' s troops , he sewed up in the belly of a hare , and sent it to him by one of his most trusty domestics .

Cyrus himself established early posts , and by causing stables to be fixed at certain distances , where relays of horses might be obtained , was the means of expediting communications between the Court of Persia and the provinces of its vast empire . It has been ascertained that a perfect system for forwarding written communications existed in China so far back pas 230 B . C ., and Marco Polo tries to establish this fact by a , statement that on a visit to that country he found that a system of posts had been in use for nearly a thousand years .

In 1464 , during the reign of Edward IV ., letters were first forwarded by post in this country , while in 1483 ( Richard III . ) post horses and stages were established . In 1543 ( Henry VII . ) letters were conveyed from London to Edinburgh in about four days , and a century later a regular letter-post was inaugurated , by which communications could pass between Charles I . and the Scottish Council ; and about the same time ( 1635 ) there was a postal interchange between the latter country and Ireland , thus establishing regular letter-posts in the three kingdoms .

During the reign of the Second Charles , a local penny post was established as a private concern , receiving great opposition from the Government . It was in his reign also ( 1663 ) that the profits of the Post Office and wine licences , worth £ 21 , 000 per annum , were settled upon James , Duke of York as a personal income , by Act of Parliament . The postage in 1677 was as follows : — " To aUparts of England and Wales beyond 80 miles , 3 pence a single letter , and 12 pence an ounce . "

In 1784 ( George III . ) the first regular mail coach started from London to Bristol , and it was during the early decades of the present century that the famous Manchester hostelry , mentioned by De Quincey , was in full swing . This was the Bridgewater Arms , situated at the corner of Market Street , next to High Street , the spot where it stood being now covered by buildings devoted to commerce . In those days the journey of nearly 200 miles , along the mail-coach road from London to Manchesterwhich passed

, through St . Albans and Derby , occupied nineteen hours , and the fact of its having been performed on one occasion in eighteen , was considered extraordinary . During the same period ( 1837 ) the mails from London to Aberdeen were carried in 58 hours , 22 minutes , and to Holyhead in 27 hours ; the passage from the latter place to Kingstown ( Ireland ) occupying about 7 * hours , and often in cases of rough weather 20 hours : so that in decent

weather a letter travelling from the metropolis of England to that of Ireland would take 34 | hours , and sometimes over 47 hours . By means of railways and recently accelerated speed a wonderful contrast is presented , the night mails from London to Aberdeen occupying in these days of progress only 11 hours , 5 minutes . A quick service night and day mail also reduces the time between London and Dublin , which is at present nine hours and a half .

It is to be hoped that the postal authorities are not quite so stringent as formerly . In the year 1842 the mail bag from Glasgow for Manchester was overlooked until half-an-hour after the coach had departed . This being anterior to the days of the telegraph , this useful means of communicating with the coach could not be adopted , so a special express coach containing the truant bag was sent in pursuit . But through various delays in obtaining

fresh horses at the different stages , the mail was not overtaken , and the bag was not handed over till Manchester was reached . For the cost incurred ( about £ 9 ) the clerk of the road and the mail guard were held by the Postmaster-General to be responsible , the former for neglecting to see the bag out of the office , and the latter for omitting to see it into the coach .

The following particulars , extracted from the forty-third report of the Postmaster-General , may be of some interest to the reader . The staff of the Post Office consists of 144 , 700 persons , of whom 81 , 826 including 12 , 406 women , are on the permanent establishment . In the year

Humour Of The Post Office.

1886-87 the expenditure was £ 8 , 399 , 951 , and salaries and wages amounted to £ 4 , 278 , 895 . In 1895-96 the total expenditure was £ 11 , 006 , 613 , and salaries and wages were £ 6 , 629 , 865 . The net profit to tho exchequer was £ 3 , 753 , 109 . England was the first country to issue postage stamps and stamped envelopes , the first appearing in 1840 . The denomination of the earliest stamp was one penny . The first stamps issued by the United States were placed on sale in 1847 , though several years earlier stamps were issued by

various postmasters and express companies , and possibly the following advertisement , which appeared in the " Daily Courant , " Wednesday , 4 th January 1710 , may refer to a similar practice in this country : —" Whereas a Person in some Distress sent a Letter by the Half-penny Carriage on Monday night last , directed to a Gentlewoman in Marlborough-street , he is desired to send another Letter , and where he may be spoke with , and Care will be taken to his Content . "

In these days of cheap postage it would be considered a contemptible action were anyone to resort to the clever expedient for evading payment which is mentioned by the poet Coleridge . He says that in one of his walks in the Lake district he saw the postman hand a letter to the servant girl at a village inn . After carefully looking at the address , she returned the missive to the man , explaining that she could not take it in , as she was too poor to

pay the amount demanded . Coleridge at once stepped forward , and giving the postman the shilling required , handed the letter to the girl , who , however , did not appear as pleased as expected , and when the postman was well out of hearing she confessed to the poet that the whole of the communication consisted in the address and certain pre-arranged external blots and marks . This was the method adopted by her lover and self to keep up an unpaid-for correspondence in the days of dear postage .

A literary curiosity passed through a rural post office in Northumberland a few years ago , in the shape of a letter which bore the following elaborate address : " For the Girl at the Hetheryshank near the Cow Gate near the Toll near Slatyford newcastle-on-Tyne on that side of the road furtherest from Kenton and near to the Bath House next to Byre joining the stable close to the cart shed and not far from the Barn and thrashing machine . "

Another , almost as lucid as this , was intended for one " who had a cork leg , and a bright projecting set of teeth , " the addressee being a jeweller ' s assistant in a county town , who , however , was found after much trouble . Nearly 22 , 000 letters were posted one year without any address . Among these , more than 1 , 100 contained cash , bank-notes , cheques , and bills , with an aggregate value of above £ 4 , 000 . As many as 72 , 000 postage stamps were found loose in the letter-boxes . More than 27 , 000 articles of various kinds escaped from the covers in which they had been imperfectly secured , and were sent to the Returned Letter Office .

In Aberdeen a person was observed to deposit a letter in a disused street hydrant , and on the cover of the box being removed three other letters were found , the senders of which had similarly mistaken the water pillar for a pillar letter box . The letters had been passed into the box through the pace formerly occupied by the tap-lever . A couple of years ago the postman at Clayton West , near Huddersfield ,

delivered a newspaper supposed to have been posted nearly forty-six years previously . The newspaper bore no postage stamp , but was impressed with the Government duty stamp , which was required to appear on all newspapers before publication , until June 1885 , which stamp franked a newspaper through the post without payment . The newspaper in question was " Bell ' s Life in London , " for 1 st December 1850 .

The journal in which the incident was recorded , after comraentmg upon the peculiar nature of the news which the belated newspaper contained , says : — " With customary exactitude the Post Office authorities tried to deliver the newspaper to A— B— , jun ., the addressee . That was , however , beyond their powers ; forty-six years added to a junior changes a man to a senior . Less time had done it in this instance , and A— B— had taken the long journey to that bourne from whence no traveller returns , while this newspaper was making the short journey of thirty miles from Manchester to

Clayton West . The postman explained that the newspaper had been found in the recess of a revolving shutter at Rusholme . It is supposed that the sender of it was an Alderman of the city of Manchester ; that he put the paper into the aperture when the shutter was down ; that it fell into the space between the shutter and the letter box mouth ; and that it was next morning carried into the recess when the shutter was wound up . The paper was evidently in a secure place ; it is in excellent preservation ; and is regarded as a curious relic by its recipient , the brother of A— B— , jun . "

In a newspaper which reached the Returned Letter Office were found to be enclosed four sovereigns , and in another a gold locket . A letter having a very large seal at the back was observed in course of transit , and on the seal , which had become slighty chipped , being examined , gold coins to the value of £ 1 10 s were discovered to be imbedded in the wax . The senders of newspapers very often infringe the regulations by forwarding unauthorised articles

of various kinds concealed Between the folds . Of such enclosures , the following amongst others have been observed : Cigars and tobacco , collars , seaweed , ferns and flowers , gloves , handkerchiefs , music , patterns , sermons , stockings , lace , postage stamps , money , musical instruments , and cutlery , artificial teeth and eyes , wigs , vegetables , game and fish , medicine and perfumery , and articles of dress .

A parcel containing 500 leeches , one with thirty frogs , and others freighted with snakes and lizards , have been sent , while even an innocent kitten has been launched amidst the mysteries of postal transmission . We are also told of sucking pigs , plum puddings , a human skull and portions of a dead dog , the latter on its way to a veterinary surgeon for analysis . Several of the articles above mentioned being prohibiteu , they were sent to the Returned Letter Office .

On one occasion diamonds and jewellery worth £ 25 , 000 were forwarded as walking sticks , with a declared value of £ 7 10 s , this extraordinary risk being run for the sake of saving the extra fees in registration . A live snake which had escaped from a postal packet was discovered in the Holyhead and Kingstown Marine Post Office , and , at the expiration of a fortnight , being still unclaimed , it was sent to the Dublin Zoological Gardens . A packet

containing a live horned frog reached Liverpool from the United States , and was given up to the addressee , who called for it . Another packet , also from America , reached the Dublin Post Office , containing two live lizards , and was similarly given up to the addressee on personal application . In one case complaint was made that a letter addressed to a " Naturalist" bad failed to reach- its destination , but it was afterwards found in a cage on the premises of the addressee , where it had been placed by a monkey . [ To be continued . ] " The Book of Rarities , " by Edward Roberts , P . M .