Postman

“ THE POSTMAN I must say a good word for the postman. He occupies so large a place in most of our lives that, as a matter of common courtesy, the least we can do is to recognize his value and importance. Others may not feel as I do, but I confess that I bless the postman every day of my life. ”

“ That is the miracle with the postman. He brings bad news and good news and indifferent news, but we only remember him by his good news. Like the sun-dial, he only records the sunny hours. He is the hope that springs eternal in the human breast. He comes up the path, probably with a handful of accounts you have not paid, income tax demands, offers from kind gentlemen to lend you ten thousand pounds on your note of hand, applications for subscriptions, and other things that you would be pleased to do without. ”

“ It is peculiarly necessary that a postman should, before all things, be honest. By this trifling obstacle is the magnificently specious scheme of substituting Post Office employment for the treadmill frustrated. ”

“ The postman’s double knock at the door the next morning is ‘more germain to the matter.’ How that knock often goes to the heart! We distinguish to a nicety the arrival of the Two-penny or the General Post. The summons of the latter is louder and heavier, as bringing news from a greater distance, and as, the longer it has been delayed, fraught with a deeper interest. We catch the sound of what is to be paid—eight-pence, nine-pence, a shilling—and our hopes generally rise with the postage. How we are provoked at the delay in getting change—at the servant who does not hear the door! ”

“ Why do they look like postmen? It isn’t fair on a fellow. Makes it dashed confusing. I was simply standing on the pavement, looking at things, when a fellow who looked like a postman prodded me in the ribs with a club. I didn’t see why I should have postmen prodding me. Why the dickens should a fellow come three thousand miles to be prodded by postmen?”
“The point is well taken,” said George. ”

“ The Postman. Who is the man who is most eagerly looked for as he comes down the street? The Postman. Who receives, at every door where he stops, a most cordial welcome? The Postman. I wonder if the thrill of getting a letter will ever pass away. When you come home from school the first thing you do is to look on the hall table to see if the Postman has brought you a letter. It is the same when we grow up. No matter how many letters we may receive we never get over the keen delight at having the Postman bring us letters.
Last Sunday afternoon you wrote your grandmother. ”

“ I tried to keep the postman in sight as he hurried along the narrow walk between the snow wall and the row of open-front shops. Occasionally he would call out “A message!”—“A message!” and stop to put mail into an outstretched hand. The path was narrow and I frequently was jostled by passing people, but I was not far behind the postman when he turned into our street. I knew he would go to the side entrance with the mail; so I hurried very fast and had reached Grandmother’s room and already made my bow of “I have come back,” before a maid entered with the mail. ”

“ JERRY. Well, I’ve done pretty well by you this morning. Maybe you got a letter for me.
DORIS. No, there’s none to-day.
JERRY. Funny thing: I came near leaving that pink letter with a little girl down the street who looked as if she needed one pretty bad. I thought that maybe it was really meant for her, and just had the wrong name and address on by mistake. It would of tickled her. I get tempted to leave mail where it really ought to go instead of where it’s addressed to. Mail ought to go to people who appreciate it. It’s hard on a postman, especially when he’s the best one they ever had. ”

“ Postmen allis knocks so as to waken babies and then they tries to look as if they didn't no as baby was behind the door. If the postman doesn't bring your letters you can summons him, thats why they're so frightened. ”

“ What a martyrdom those four or five postal deliveries per diem of a great town may and do inflict upon some of those who are eagerly waiting for something to come, and it never appears. The postman goes past, or calls, with terrible regularity. ”

“ Some of the older country postmen say that in by-gone days the poor people, unable to read themselves, considered it part of a postman's duty to read their letters for them, and they looked for sympathy from the postmen in case of receipt of bad news. The Chew Stoke postman had a walk, in and out, of over twenty miles, and had to carry whatever load there was for the route. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The evening communiqué arrives at 8 P. M. An old white-haired postman pastes it upon the bulletin board outside the post office. Long before the hour one can hear steps echoing on the pavement, as men, women and children, old people on crutches, cripples leaning on their nurses' arms, hasten in the same direction, moved by the same anxious curiosity. When the weather is inclement one turns up his trousers, or removes her best skirt. ”

“ I bless the postman because he can do for me, and do better than I could do, so many delicate things. I regard the postman as a faithful and indispensable assistant. It often falls to a minister’s lot to approach people, and especially young people, on the most delicate and important subjects. Upon their decisions much of their future happiness and usefulness will depend. ”

“ A postman is surely the last occupation we should think of for a lame man, but there have been several instances where a man with crutches has performed his daily duties willingly and excellently. An official sent out to test a man's ability to do his work—the postman walked 17 miles on crutches—found himself quite outpaced by the lame official. A rural postman who had a wooden leg made use of a donkey and cart, but it was found out after his resignation that finding a difficulty in getting in and out of his cart he carried with him a tin bucket full of large stones. ”

“ If a postman were to deliver the whole of his letters as he went along, not taking the money for any of them, and returned through his walk, and then collected the money, would they not all be delivered much earlier than they are now? ”

“ Doris goes to the window.
DORIS. It’s only the postman.
FISH. I never heard a postman with a whistle like that.
DORIS. He must be a new one on this beat. That’s too bad. The old one used to give me my mail wherever I met him, even if he was four or five blocks from my house. ”

“ Will not these good people some day come to see that if it is advantageous to have a path that admits of the postman bringing to them three geese in a basket, and other such things, that it would be more advantageous to have a road that would admit of the diligence post, or the carrier’s cart, bringing them many other things they want, but which are beyond the carrying power of the postman? ”

“ If he is successful in either attempt the child who is caught or whose chair he has taken becomes postman, while the retiring postman receives a small valentine as his reward. A child who remains seated when his name is called must take the place of the postman. ”

“ Ever to see the postman come near the house now gave me such I fear that it was a reprieve when he went by, but in about another ten days or a fortnight he says again, "Here's one for Mrs. Edson.--Is she pretty well?" "She is pretty well postman, but not well enough to rise so early as she used" which was so far gospel-truth. ”

“ The long, rambling, friendly hand is distinctive, and if it has been carried in the pocket a long time before mailing, the postman knows that the writer is a married woman with a foolish trust in her husband. ”

“ I dare say many a young barrister of the present day does not know what huggery means or meant!
Among the sights and sounds which were familiar to the eye and ear in the London of my youth, and which are so no longer, may be mentioned the twopenny postman. Not many probably of the rising generation are aware, that in their fathers’ days the London postal service was dual The “twopenny{55} postman,” who delivered letters sent from one part of London to another, was a different person from the “general postman,” who delivered those which came from the country. ”

“ A postman, when he has once started on his walk, must not go to his own house or to any other except to deliver a letter; he must not smoke on duty; he must not deliver letters to owners in the streets, but only at the houses to which they are addressed; he must not put letters under doors even if asked to do so; he must not take letters from the public for registration; he must carry no other missives than those that have been regularly posted; he must not act as a newsagent; must not borrow money from persons on his walk ”

“ They conveyed the idea that the authorities were on the whole so solicitous about the health and comfort of their lesser subordinates that they would temper the wind to the shorn lamb, and were only too eager to stand between a postman and a draught even while they resolutely refused him proper boots and a winter overcoat. ”

“ Aunt Aldridge’s letters, for example, were left at the Chappells’ and an old woman got a halfpenny a letter for taking them up to the Odd House.’ In those days the postman was clearly not made for man, but man for the postman. ”

“ It is thus that when a person has come to us habitually at a certain hour, say the postman to deliver our letters, we may readily take some other person who appears at the time for him, and be ready to affirm or to swear that we saw him. ”

“ The construction of the houses contributes much to the efficiency of the system. The postman’s functions are here much easier than those of his continental colleagues. He is not required to go up and down stairs, he gives his double knock; and as the majority of letters are inland letters, and as such prepaid, no time is lost with paying and giving change. ”

“ He has doubts about the weights and distances. In short, he has to ask the postman to walk upstairs, and on the way he tries to find out the signatures of the letters, thinking it may be prudent to refuse some of them. ”

“ Until recently almost, discontent in a Government department was thought a form of moral disease, and agitators were hunted as assiduously as was the Colorado beetle. There are doubtless many among the public who actually entertain some such view in regard to postal servants. There are many again to whom the Post-Office is represented by the principal living emblem in livery, the postman ”

“ Advocacy of this nature, such as it was, did no more than cause annoyance and irritation to those who found a ready means to visit reprisals on the men whom they might suspect of being the secret instigators of such insults, while among the men it only satisfied an idle curiosity. Yet the men undoubtedly would have welcomed some proper medium to ventilate their growing grievances. The Postman, which had been started as the organ of a previous agitation, was long since defunct, and a copy of the Beehive was now almost a relic of ancient history. ”

“ You never see postmen fight: not even with their fists, cuz they havent got no time with all those letters to take round. I dont think postmen dare even fight boys cuz when me and some more boys was a looking at a postman unlocking a pillar box and one of the boys pushed his head in the hole and we all run away: he wouldn't even run after us but only told a polleceman when he came round the corner and when he came away from the polleceman he was frightened of walking 308our way past us but jumped on a tramway and shammed not to see us. ”

“ The promised notification was hanging over her head. The postman's knock within the neighbourhood was beginning to bring its daily terrors, and if reading could banish the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained. ”

“ and perhaps there is no greater test of a man’s regularity and easiness of conscience, than his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of the rat-tat! The good are eager for it: but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof. ”

“ DORIS. I never heard of a mailman being good.
JERRY. They’re mostly all good. Some professions anybody can get into them, like business or politics for instance, but you take postmen—they’re like angels, they sort of pick ’em out. [Witheringly.] They not only pick ’em out—they select ’em.
FISH [fascinated] . And you’re the best one.
JERRY [modestly] . Yes, I’m the best one they ever had. [He looks over the letters.] Now here’s what I call a clever ad. Delivered a lot of these this morning. Children like ’em, you know. They’re from the carpet company. ”

“ There appeared to be some difficulty in procuring him his mail, and each minute he was kept waiting seemed to increase his impatience almost beyond [5] the bounds of endurance. I saw him lean forward and gasp out a hurried word to the postmaster, and was idly wondering over his anxiety and its probable causes, when I heard a hasty exclamation near me, and looking around, saw the postmaster himself beckoning to me from the door of the enclosure. ”

“ But shall an author be so shabby as to abridge his sentiments, for the sake of postage, merely because a post-office clerk weighs them more according to his own than the postal rates? And am I not encouraged to the opposite course—that of protracting my emotions—by the electoral, princely, and city-benches in Ratisbon, inasmuch as the said benches by an imperial recess allow me a deduction of two thirds of my postage for printed matter, in order, as they hope, to give encouragement to literature and to sentiment? ”