The Courier

“ Only sometimes, in the morning on the hilltops, a courier comes from the season that tarries. With feet that trip on the nodding weeds, and a voice singing in the fluttering trees, and a smile that speaks in a bluer sky, the unseen courier of autumn comes and goes. ”

“ At way-stations the courier comes to your compartment to see if you want a glass of water, or a newspaper, or anything; at eating-stations he sends luncheon out to you, while the other people scramble and worry in the dining-rooms. If anything breaks about the car you are in, and a station-master proposes to pack you and your agent into a compartment with strangers, the courier reveals to him confidentially that you are a French duke born deaf and dumb, and the official comes and makes affable signs that he has ordered a choice car to be added to the train for you. ”

“ Sir Richard beamed at Fay’s enthusiasm. “There’s a courier living in Richmond Hill who has what you want,” said the chief. “This courier has been to—the country north and east of here. From this courier you not only will obtain the little silver greyhound, but also a detailed description of the embassy where the key to the cipher is. I would suggest that you turn the courier’s place of residence off tomorrow night. We’ll give out that you escaped from Dartmoor and entered London in some surprising manner. What would be more natural than you robbing a house for clothes and papers? ”

“ Or, we may fancy ourselves in the circle of listeners, all with necks stretched out towards an old gentleman in the centre, who deliberately puts on his spectacles, unfolds the wet newspaper, and gives us the details of the broken and contradictory reports, which have been flying from mouth to mouth, ever since the courier alighted at Secretary Oliver’s office. ”

“ The arrival of the courier who brought the fatal intelligence gave rise to a scene which I may relate here. It was two o'clock in the morning when the courier arrived at the Tuileries. In his hurry the First Consul could not wait to rouse any one to call me up. I had informed him some days before that if he should want me during the night he should send for me to the corridor, as I had changed my bedchamber on account of my wife's accouchement. He came up himself and instead of knocking at my door knocked at that of my secretary. ”

“ WITHOUT A COURIER.
preceded you half an hour to scramble for impossible places and lose their tempers, but you can take your time, the courier has secured your seats for you, and you can occupy them at your leisure.
At the station, the crowd mash one another to pulp in the effort to get the weigher's attention to their trunks; they dispute hotly with these tyrants, who are cool and indifferent ”

“ A housewife will ask him to buy her a bar of soap; a girl will entrust him with the matching of a ribbon; a hotel-keeper will order through him a cask of beer; and so on. The courier is busy throughout the day executing his various commissions, now in one shop, now in another; and on the return journey his cart, hung 92 all over with bulky packages and small,—here a chair, there a broom, here a tin of biscuits—resembles a Christmas-tree. The courier's memory must needs be good and his hand steady, for it is the custom to give him at each house as much as he likes to drink. ”

“ The despatches which pass between the foreign office and its representatives abroad, and which cannot be entrusted to the postal service or the telegraph, are carried by special couriers, styled, in the British service, King’s Messengers. “Courier,” more particularly, is applied to a travelling attendant, whose duties are to arrange for the carrying of the luggage, obtaining of passports, settling of hotel accommodation, and generally to look to the comfort and facility of travel. ”

“ I have known a man obtain credit for stopping a courier—waylaying him, I might rather call it—and taking by force a secret treaty from his hand, while the steady services of a life-long have gone unrewarded. ”

“ Men’s minds and eyes have been all upon you, and each homeward courier has been rifled of his budget at every port and village on his way by a hundred hungry speculators, as sharply as though he were a rich wanderer beset by footpads on a lonely heath. ”

“ Sometimes he writes with the courier who is to carry his letter impatiently chafing outside the door; sometimes a promptly written reply is carried round the whole known world by some faithless messenger before it reaches his anxious correspondent ”

“ He is a gentleman well known in the neighbourhood as an Auctioneer, and he has a peculiar manner of reading with strong emphasis certain passages, at the end of which he makes long pauses, laughs with inward satisfaction, and not infrequently infuses a degree of pleasantry in others. The Courier is his favourite paper, and if drawn into an argument, he is not to be easily subdued. “At arguing too each person own'd his skill, For e'en tho' vanquish'd, he can argue still.” ”

“ Still, if I felt that I could afford the tax, I would never travel without a courier, for a good courier is a convenience whose value cannot be estimated in dollars and cents. Without him, travel is a bitter harassment, a purgatory of little exasperating annoyances, a ceaseless and pitiless punishment—I mean to an irascible man who has no business capacity and is confused by details. ”

“ The postal system is a despair, the couriers lounging idly along the road, taking often a week to go 200 miles, while postmasters take letters from the mail when they please, and are the tools of the Government. ”

“ The couriers don’t want to hear about it; they have the same thing every day. I can’t talk to the dudes about it. They just want to hear how many Indians are born every year.”
“Or if the couriers aren’t Mexican, really. Or how many stamps to use on letters to Chicago. Well, tell your friends. They enjoy it.” ”

“ A bustling courier, with all the officiousness of his craft, speedily opened the door and banged down the steps, and a very tall old man, in what appeared to be an undress military frock, descended, and then assisted a young lady to alight. ”

“ Now Courier was a very remarkable and very rare combination. Delécluze tells us that his real passion was to turn a phrase in the happiest possible style; and that he was not so much a fanatical politican as a Rabelaisian critic of whatever seemed extravagant and grotesque in administration. Courier therefore is an exceptional instance of the best conceivable man for newspaper work; a man who is not so much concerned with the thought itself as with the way of putting it before the world. ”

“ I wrote you yesterday by a courier employed at great expense to go down to Vera Cruz, but it is very uncertain whether he will get through. All the letters that have been sent to the States for months have been by couriers, who carry 80 to 100 letters, each a very small package, at two dollars per letter, and for the sake of the gain run the gauntlet of the guerrillas and robbers that infest the road. ”

“ The reader will find this arch on any map of Paris, with the roads diverging from it.
[D] Mr. Holiday called this street, of course, by its French name; but we give its name here in English, for the convenience of the reader, who may, perhaps, not be able to pronounce French.
[E] A courier is a traveling servant. A good courier understands all the principal languages of Europe, and is acquainted with all the routes and modes of travelling. He takes all the care of the party that employs him; makes bargains for them; finds out good hotels for them to go to; pays the bills ”

“ The couriers generally discharge their duty with admirable efficiency, and every one assists them with great promptness. All Government messengers are provided with the best and swiftest ponies, and at every halt are furnished with lodgings, water, firewood, and a man to cook their victuals. ”

“ Be very particular in employing a courier, as your happiness or misery will depend in great measure upon his goodness or badness. Your banker in London or Paris can generally recommend a trustworthy man, and there is a couriers' association in London that is well spoken of. ”

“ They have re-established their packet-boats here indeed; but they are to go from Bourdeaux, which, being between four and five hundred miles from hence, is too far to send a courier with any letters but on the most extraordinary occasions; and without a courier, they must pass through the post office. I shall, therefore, not make use of this mode of conveyance, but prefer sending my letters by a private hand, by the way of London. The uncertainty of finding private conveyances to London, is the principal objection to this. ”

“ I represented to him that between the Friday, the day the despatches from the court arrived, and Saturday, on which ours were sent off, there was not sufficient time to write so much in cipher, and carry on the considerable correspondence with which I was charged for the same courier. He found an admirable expedient, which was to prepare on Thursday the answer to the despatches we were expected to receive on the next day. ”

“ Send forward a courier, Riquet, as fast as possible towards Paris, giving notice at the post-houses that I come with four attendants, yourself one, and ordering horses to be prepared, for I must ride post to the capital. Have every thing ready in a couple of hours at the latest, for I must distance this morning's ordinary courier, and get to the court before him."
"If you ride as you usually do, my lord," replied the man, "you will easily do that, for you seldom fail to kill all the horses and all the postilions ”

“ Orders flew from the firm's office and the little printing-plant at Sandy Bend broke all its hazy precedents, with the result that a hard-riding courier, relaying twice, carried the work of the job-print toward Mesquite. ”

“ A courier should be familiar with English, French, German, and Italian, and if you are going to Spain, Russia, or the Scandinavian countries, you should seek for one who knows the languages along your intended route of travel. You can hire a good courier for fifty or sixty dollars a month, though he will frequently ask more, and you must pay extra for one who speaks Russian, Scandinavian, or Spanish. ”

“ Send this morning to thy trusty keepers of the roads leading south from Antioch, and bid them search every courier going and coming; if they find private despatches relating to thee or thine affairs, thou shouldst see them. ”

“ There was in the valley of Virginia a beautiful young lady who acted as a courier for some of the officers and was said to sometimes pass through the lines where a man would not be allowed to go, and to return bringing valuable information. ”

“ His business is, to pay postmasters and postilions more than they ought to have, to aid the landlords of inns, and the officers of Custom-houses, the cicerone and the waiter in plundering his employer to the best of his abilities, to run away from him in case of danger, and to appropriate such parts of his goods and chattels, in case of sickness or death, as may be most easily secreted. This personage is called a courier ”

“ An extraordinary courier, that left town this morning, has seen it put into a place of safety. The chief muleteer will wait for the conclusion of events; and the escort has been intrusted to the command of a brave and faithful man. ”

“ Dis Grand Hôtel; I see your Loggosh, Sar; gif me se empfangschein." "Do you speak English?" I retort.—"Certinly; spik Ingleese—empfangschein!"—"Empfangschein" baffles me, and I am about to hand my keys to the monster, when a good-natured Courier explains that it signifies the luggage-receipt.
Away ambles the Porter, leaving me with that orphaned sort of feeling which a luggageless Englishman experiences; it is pouring cats and dogs; I am dead beat; I creep into the dark omnibus. I find myself quite alone. I wait impatiently—a quarter of an hour—twenty-five minutes—still no Porter ”

“ His operations are conducted upon well understood principles, and he regards the taking of a commission as entirely compatible with rigid integrity. Now and then a courier can be found who disdains commissions, and faithfully watches the interest of his employer, and when such a man is obtained he may be regarded as a treasure. ”

“ But let it be remembered that our opinion does not protect travellers in the stage coach, or the carrier of the mail in driving about any town to discharge or to receive passengers; and much less in blowing his horn to the disturbance of serious people either at public worship or in their own houses. The carrier may proceed with the mail on the Lord’s day to the post-office; he may go to any public house to refresh himself and his horses; and he may take the mail from the post-office and proceed on his route. Any other liberties on the Lord’s day our opinion does not warrant. ”

“ I want to make every man and woman in the postal service feel that he or she is a partner in this greatest of all business undertakings, whose individual judgment is valued, and whose welfare is of the utmost importance to the successful operation of the whole organization. We want every postal co-worker to feel that he has more than a job. A letter-carrier does a good deal more than bring a letter into a home when he calls. ”

“ Twice a year the mail carrier braved first the heat of summer and then the rigour of winter, and when the contents of the mail-bag were emptied on the parlour floor what delight in once more touching the outside world. ”