James Wilson Hyde

“ Post-office sorters, unlike men who follow other avocations, are a race unsung, and a people unknown to fame. The soldier of adventure, the mariner on the high seas, the village blacksmith, the tiller of the soil, the woodman in the forest—nay, even the tailor on his bench,—all of these have formed the theme of song, and have claimed the notice of writers of verse. It is otherwise with the men who sort our letters. This may possibly be due to two causes—that sorters are comparatively a modern institution, and that their work is carried on practically under seal. ”

“ Every one will call his own line the great line; but surely, if I am to travel either, I should be allowed to judge for myself; and I believe it would be thought very arbitrary indeed, if, before I set out, a proprietor or advocate for any of these great lines should arrest my carriage or my horse, and say, You shall not proceed but upon my line. I confess myself so stupid that I can see no difference betwixt this and taking it out of the power of the Post-office to judge what line they shall journey mails. ”

“ Exposed to all the inclemency of the seasons, both by night and day; having to weather snowstorms and suffer the drenchings of heavy rain; to grope a way through the dense fogs of our climate, and endure the biting frosts of midwinter; or yet to face the masked highwayman on the open heath, or the footpad in the deep and narrow road,—these were the unpleasantnesses and the dangers which beset the couriers of the Post-office in past years, ere the department had grown to its present robust manhood. ”

“ Of all institutions of modern times, there is, perhaps, none so pre-eminently a people's institution as is the Post-office. Not only does it carry letters and newspapers everywhere, both within and without the kingdom, but it is the transmitter of messages by telegraph, a vast banker for the savings of the working classes, an insurer of lives, a carrier of parcels, and a distributor of various kinds of Government licences. ”

“ We flew away from Glasgow on the top of the mail, ten miles an hour, past steaming meadows and smoking chimneys, to the Cumberland lakes, to Keswick, Kendal, and the prettiest towns and villages. The whole country is like a drawing-room. The rocky walls are papered with bushes, moss, and firs; the trees are carefully wrapped up in ivy; there are no walls or fences, only high hedges, and you see them all the way up flat hill-tops. On all sides carriages full of travellers fly along the roads ”

“ Obvious as it must be to every mind capable of apprehending ordinary matters in the present day, that the opening up of the country by the laying down of good roads would encourage trade, promote social intercourse, knit together the whole kingdom, and render its government the more easy and effective; yet it is a fact that the improvement of the roads in various parts of the country, both in England and Scotland, was stoutly opposed by the people, even in certain places entailing riot and bloodshed. ”

“ The Post-office is no stranger to the taunt that it is swathed from head to foot in red tape; or, at any rate, that its operations are so trammelled with routine that no inquiry into irregularities can be made with anything like due expedition. Such accusations as these often come from unreflecting persons, or from those whose business operations are of a small kind, and who have no idea of the methods necessary for carrying on a huge administration.
An ordinary shopkeeper, for example, has under his own eye the whole sphere of his daily business ”

“ The Times.—"The author of 'The Royal Mail' has served five-and-twenty years in the Post-office, and had it been his fortune to turn novelist, like his confrère Anthony Trollope, he would never have been so lavish of invaluable materials. The merest glance through his pages might suggest subjects or incidents for half a score of sensational romances. But the whole of the volume is so full of fascination that once taken up it is difficult to lay it down." ”

“ The Post-office, while it is the willing handmaid to commerce, the vehicle of social intercourse, and the necessary helper in almost every enterprise and occupation, becomes at the same time a ready means for the unscrupulous to carry on a wonderful variety of frauds on the public, and enables a whole army of needy and designing persons to live upon the generous impulses of society. ”

“ Of all the interruptions to the mail-coach service, none were so serious as those which were occasioned by snowstorms, nor were the dangers attending them of a light nature to the drivers, guards, or passengers. The work achieved by man, either for good or evil, how insignificant does it not seem when contrasted with the phenomena of nature! ”

“ A few persons, no doubt, have been privileged to see the interior working of some important Post-office, but it is the bare truth to say that the people know nothing of what goes on within the doors of that ubiquitous establishment. When it is remembered that the metropolitan offices of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin have to maintain touch with every petty office and every one of their servants scattered throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland ”

“ At an inn, the travellers would hardly have made a fair start in appeasing their hunger, when the guard would be heard calling upon them to take their seats, which, with mouths full, and still hungry, they would be forced to do, though with a bad grace and a growl—the acknowledged privilege of Englishmen. A story is told of one passenger, however, who was equal to the occasion. Leisurely sipping his tea and eating his toast, this traveller was found by the landlord in the breakfast-room when the other passengers were seated and the coach was on the point of starting. ”

“ These various subjects, especially when they have become settled into the routine state, might be considered as affording a poor soil for the growth of anything of interest—that is, of curious interest—apart from that which duty calls upon a man to find in his proper work. Yet the Post-office is not without its veins of humour, though the metal to be extracted may perhaps be scanty as compared with the vast extent of the mine from which it has to be taken. ”

“ In those days there were really no sorters, unless such as were employed in the chief office in London. As to the work being carried on under seal, it is not going beyond the truth to say that, to the great majority of persons, the interior of the Post-office is a terra incognita, their sole knowledge of the institution being derived from the pillar and the postman.
Yet the sorters of the present age, forming a very large body, are ever engaged in doing an important and by no means simple duty. ”

“ A man who can stand at the stamp-counter and serve the public without fear and without reproach, must needs be possessed of a highly sweetened temper. What with the impatient demands of some, the unreasonable demurs of others, the tiresome iteration of questions propounded by the eccentric, and the attention required to be given to the Mrs Browns of society, not to mention the irritating remarks at times of the inconsiderate, the position behind the counter is one which calls for self-control and a large share of good-nature. ”

“ When the nights are clear, a trained operator can easily recognise his marks; but in a very dark night, or during a fog, his skill and experience are put to the test. On such occasions he seems to be guided by the promptings of his collective senses. He puts his face close to the window, shutting off the light from the carriage with his hands, and peers into the darkness, trying to recognise some wayside object; he listens to the noise made by the train, estimates its speed of travelling, and by these means he judges of his position, and effects the exchange of the mails. ”

“ I do not know that a man's character is to be decided by his calling. He was engaged by the Office to keep a receiving-house for the runners. He is paid for his trouble by Government, and is as much under the confidence and trust of the Office, till he proves himself unworthy of it, as the postmasters of Perth, Coupar-Angus, or Blairgowrie. It is not surprising, however, that this poor blacksmith should be in general terms decided unfit for such duty, when officers who should have been much better acquainted with the hammer and nails of office, do not know how to drive them! ”

“ Unlike travelling in the present day, when one may go 100 miles in a railway carriage without speaking to a fellow-passenger, the journey in the old-fashioned waggon brought all the travellers too close and too long together to admit of individual isolation, for the passengers might be associated for days together as companions, had to take their refreshment together, lived as it were in common, and it was even the custom to elect a chairman at the outset to preside over the company during the journey. ”

“ To us who live in an age when the public roads are generally safe to travellers, it is difficult to realise the dangers that lurked in the highways at no more remote a period than last century; nor can we well realise a state of things under which mail-coaches in this our quiet England had to be protected by guards armed to the teeth. ”

“ On the left of Britannia, who looks herself very much like a termagant, there is an agglomeration of native Indians, missionaries, Yankees, and casks of tobacco, with a sprinkling of foliage, and the rotten stem of a tree, not forgetting a little terrier dog inquisitively gliding between the legs of the mysterious conclave to see the row. ”

“ When most men are enjoying the refreshment of nature's sweet restorer, which it is the privilege of the night-hours to give, the sorters in a large number of Post-offices throughout the country are hard at work, and on nearly all the great lines of railway the travelling Post-offices are speeding their wakeful flight in every direction, carrying not only immense quantities of correspondence, but a large staff of men who arrange and sort it in transit. ”

“ It is a very pretty country out hear, wide rolling prairies enter spersed with fine forests. There is a stream of water running through our land, a stream so softly and peasfully wild that it looks as if nature had onely just made it and laid down her pencil and smiled. ”

“ The failure of the Mulready envelope to establish itself in public favour is surely a monument to the caprice of the national taste, if it be not an evidence of how readily the tide of thoughtless opposition may set in to reject that which is new or unusual, without serious grounds for dislike. ”

“ The smaller the place the greater is the thirst for neighbourly gossip, the more quickly does it spread [293] when out, and the more ready are those whose secrets ooze forth to point the finger of suspicion at the Post-office. ”

“ In small country towns in the present day, it is no uncommon thing to attribute the spread of "secrets" about the place to a breach of confidence at the Post-office, while the real fact is that things told by the persons concerned in strictest secrecy to their most intimate friends are by these communicated again to other kind friends, and so the ripple of information rolls on till there is no longer any secret at all, and the poor official at the Post-office is assumed to be the only possible offender. ”

“ When the only public approaches to Parliament were King Street and Union Street, these were so wretchedly paved, that when the King went in state to the House, the ruts had to be filled up with bundles of fagots to allow the royal coach a safe transit. While the art of street-paving was thus so imperfect, that of road-making was equally defective, so that the country visitor to the metropolis, and its dangers of coach-driving, had generally a sufficient preparative for the worst during his journey to town. ”

“ It lies in the nature of things that sorters' duties should largely fall into the night. Like a skilful mariner who bends to his use every wind that blows, the Post-office avails itself of every opportunity to send forward its letters. To lay aside till morning, corre [126] spondence arriving at an intermediate stage at night, would not consort with the demands of the age we live in; despatch is of the first consequence, and hence it is that to deal with through correspondence, many offices are open during the night. ”

“ Occasionally the sending of live reptiles through the Post-office gives rise to interruption to the work, as has occurred when snakes have escaped from the packets in which they had been enclosed. The sorters, not knowing whether the creatures are venomous or not, are naturally chary in the matter of laying hold of them; and it may readily be conceived how the work would be interfered with in the limited space of a Travelling Post-office carriage containing half-a-dozen sorters, upon a considerable snake showing his activity among the correspondence, as has in reality happened. ”

“ The Post-office renders an unpretending yet most important service to commerce and to society; and it will be a source of deep gratification to the author if what he has written should inspire in the reader a new and unexpected interest in "the hundred-handed giant who keeps up the intercourse between the different parts of the country, and wafts a sigh from Indus to the Pole." ”

“ If you cannot get a post-chaise, take off one of the coach-horses, and ride with your bags to the next stage; there take another horse,—and so on till you come to the end of your ground, when you must deliver the bags to the next guard, who must proceed in the same manner. If your mail is so large (as the York, Manchester, and two or three others are at some part of the road) that one horse cannot carry it, you may take two; tie the mail on one horse and ride the other. The person who horses the mail must order his horsekeeper at every stage to furnish you with horses in case of accidents. ”

“ It is a common expression to say that a thing cannot be done for love or money; but while the Postmaster-General is addressed by inquirers on every variety of subject, it will be found that love and money are at the bottom of many of the communications addressed to him not strictly upon the business of his Department. ”

“ On the right of Britannia there are a brace of elephants, all backed and ready to start, when some Hindoo, [287] Chinese, Arabic, or Turkish merchants, standing quietly by, have closed their bargains and correspondence. The elephants are symbolic of the lightness and rapidity with which Mr Rowland Hill's penny postage is to be carried on, and perhaps, also, of the power requisite for transporting the £1500 a-year to his quarters, which is all he obtains for strutting about the Post-office with his hands in his pockets, and nothing to do, like a fish out of water. ”

“ There were occasions when passengers were frozen to death on the coaches, and others when they fell off benumbed with cold. It is said sometimes that first impressions are often correct; but there are, of course, erroneous first impressions as well. A story is told of a mail-guard in Scotland who had the misfortune to be on a coach which upset, and from which all the outside people were thrown to the ground. The guard came down upon his head on the top of a stiff hedge, and from this temporary situation rolled into a ditch, where for a moment he lay. ”

“ If records are not now forthcoming of all the robberies which have been committed upon the Post-office from the earliest times, we may be assured that an institution such as it is, maintaining agencies all over the country, and having to keep up communications between those agencies, would be exposed at all times and at all points to the risk of robbery, whether by the dashing boldness of the highwayman, or the less pretentious doings of the town house-breaker. ”

“ In the considerable army of servants who carry on the work of the Post-office, embracing all grades from the Postmaster-General to the rural postman, are to be found individuals of every temperament, character of mind, and disposition—the candid, the simple, the astute, the wary ”