Signpost

“ Only panels giving information likely to be of value to a reasonable proportion of drivers using the road should be shown. A multiplicity of panels defeats one of the primary objects of the signposting system—to give information at a glance. ”

“ The provision, erection and maintenance of traffic signs is primarily the duty of the highway authorities, but the authorisation given to highway authorities to use or permit the use of signs supplied by certain approved organisations, viz. the Royal Automobile Club, the Royal Scottish Automobile Club, the Automobile Association and the Cyclists’ Touring Club, has worked well in practice and has been of particular value in connection with direction signposting, and we recommend that it be continued. ”

“ He that has not eyes with which to see, will see nothing. He that has not ears with which to hear, can hear nothing.
A sign-post indicating which road to [Pg 116] take to reach a certain destination surely ought to be of great value to a traveler in a strange land. If the traveler, having failed to cultivate the habit of observing his surroundings, passes by the sign-post without seeing it, or if he reads its directions and says to himself: “I think I know better ”

“ Great men of former ages, also, are known to have painted signs; [41] in the museum at Basle, in Switzerland, there are two pictures of a school, painted by Holbein when fourteen years old, for a sign of the schoolmaster of the town. The Mule and Muleteer in the Sutherland collection, is said to have been painted by Correggio as a sign for an inn; a similar legend is told about the Young Bull of Paul Potter, in the museum of the Hague, in Holland, which is reported to have been painted for a butcher’s signboard. ”

“ The World turned Upside down is still common, being generally represented by a man walking at the south pole; in that guise it was to be seen some twenty-five years ago on the Greenwich Road. But the meaning of the sign is a state of things the opposite of what is natural and usual,—a conceit in which the artists of former ages took great delight, and which they represented [463] by animals chasing men, horses riding in carriages, and similar pleasantries. ”

“ The regular supply of a copy of the Gazette was so great a privilege that it was often regarded as sufficient wages for a post-messenger or even a deputy-postmaster. [260] [Pg 114]
This became a recognized practice before the end of the seventeenth century, and the privilege was regarded as forming part of the ordinary emoluments of the deputy-postmasters. [261] The Gazettes were sent out from London by officers known as Clerks of the Road, under the frank of these officers ”

“ The third is where a letter or parcel is addressed to a patron at a post office giving the route number and the number of the patron’s box. The fourth system is where mail is addressed to the patron at an office giving the section and township where the patron lives. This latter system is used by the railroads relative to freight and express matter and definitely locates a person in any part of the United States. The addition of the rural route number and box makes the most complete designation possible. ”

“ Signboards at the present day may be said to inspire their historian with something of a melancholy feeling. A history of them is a history of a bygone art, which has long passed its zenith, which has served its purpose, and which is destined to decay more and more before the advance of modern education. Truly the glory of signboards is departed! Though one sees here and there a barber’s pole, a golden fleece, and a few other signs of divers trades, innkeepers and alehouse-keepers are the only persons who as a class keep to their old distinctive marks. ”

“ Education was spreading fast, and reading had become a very general acquirement; yet it would appear that the exhibitors of signboards wished to make up in extravagance what they had lost in use. “Be it known, however, [26] to posterity,” says a writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, “that long after signs became unnecessary, it was not unusual for an opulent shopkeeper to lay out as much upon a sign, and the curious ironwork with which it was fixed in the house, so as to project nearly in the middle of the street, as would furnish a less considerable dealer with a stock in trade. ”

“ In provincial towns and villages, where there was sufficient room in the streets, the sign was generally suspended from a kind of small triumphal arch, standing out in the road, partly wood, partly iron, and ornamented with all that carving, gilding, and colouring could bestow upon it, (see description of White-Hart Inn at Scole.) Some of the designs of this class of ironwork have come down to us in the works of the old masters, and are indeed exquisite. ”

“ The post for which she was waiting (strolling up Dods Hill while the random church bells swung a hymn tune about her head, the clock striking four straight through the circling notes; the grass purpling under a storm-cloud; and the two dozen houses of the village cowering, infinitely humble, in company under a leaf of shadow) , the post, with all its variety of messages, envelopes addressed in bold hands, in slanting hands, stamped now with English stamps, again with Colonial stamps, or sometimes hastily dabbed with a yellow bar, the post was about to scatter a myriad messages over the world. ”

“ The great decay in the use of inn-signs of the real old sort has, it is much to be feared, now gone too far to be arrested, however much it may be regretted. In Essex, probably not five per cent. of our sign-boards are now pictorial. Even in the remote and sleepy little town of Thaxted very few of the inns now possess pictorial signs. Here and there, however, throughout the county one may still come across a few such, and several excellent examples will be hereafter alluded to. ”

“ One evening, in his quiet simple manner, the blind Postmaster-General presented himself at the General Post-Office unannounced and asked to be taken over the sorting department, and to have things explained to him. The scene was one of bustle and confusion; and the dull roar and the clank of stamping machinery, and the movements of hundreds of [127] men in a confined space, filled the overburdened air. ”

“ As soon as the road was declared fit for travel post houses were placed upon it at intervals of about nine miles, and ferries were established for transportation across the broader rivers which crossed the road.
But although no regular postal system was in operation during the French regime, an arrangement existed from an early period, by which the letters of the governor and intendant were carried by an appointed messenger, who was permitted to take with him, [Pg 42] in addition to the official letters, any that might be entrusted to him by private persons. ”

“ In all parts of France, signs still retain much more of their ancient glory than they do in England. Though not common in the newer and more fashionable streets and boulevards, they are abundant in the older quarters of Paris, Rouen, and other large towns. They are much oftener pictorial or graven than with us, and it is notable that they are used almost, or quite, as frequently by shopkeepers and other tradesmen as by the keepers of wine-shops, inns, and taverns. The sign, too, very often represents the wares sold within. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Many of those who use postal facilities do so from necessity, not choice. They must go to a post office to conduct their business and personal correspondence, carrying cash for stamps or money orders. While it is legitimate for the Postal Service to ensure convenient and unimpeded access for postal patrons, the public's use of postal property for communicative purposes means that the surrounding walkways may be an appropriate place for the exercise of vital rights of expression. ”

“ Postal cards are likewise a relief to that large class of persons who by sealed envelope are roused to inquisitiveness. As such a closed letter lies on the mantel-piece unopened, they wonder whom it is from, and what is in it, and they hold it up between them and the light to see what are the indications, and stand close by and look over your shoulder while you read it, and decipher from your looks whether it is a love-letter or a dun. The postal card is immediate relief to them, for they can read for themselves, and can pick up information on various subjects free of charge. ”

“ Sorting is simply continual subdivision, and it is interesting to watch the journeyings of the letters from the moment of posting in the big letter-box. There is very little carriage from one place to another by hand. Cable conveyors and band conveyors, worked much on the same principle as the moving platforms we have all 61seen at exhibitions and great emporiums, carry the letters from point to point until each letter finds its appointed bag, and is either taken out of the building by the City postman or deposited in a mail cart which takes it to the railway station or district office. ”

“ It is the ocean post-office. It isn’t the property of that worthy gentleman, the King of England. The box is common to all. It belongs to every flag. Post Office! there’s a crack-jaw word for you. It produces an effect on me as if the devil had suddenly offered me a cup of tea. I will tell you now how the postal arrangements are carried out. Every vessel which passes sends to the post a boat with despatches. A vessel coming from the Atlantic, for instance, sends there its letters for Europe ”

“ When you can go out of harbor at noon with all [55] flags flying, do not try to run a blockade at midnight.
In view of all this, I charge you to break up clandestine correspondence if you are engaged in it, and have no more clandestine meetings, either at the ferry, or on the street, or at the house of mutual friends, or at the corner of the woods. Do not have letters come for you to the post-office under assumed address. Have no correspondence that makes you uneasy lest some one by mistake open your letters. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Classic authors also have come in for their share of signboard popularity in this country, which, at the time they flourished, was about as little civilized as the Sandwich Islands in the days of Captain Cook. These signs were set up by booksellers; thus Homer’s Head was, in 1735, the sign of Lawton Gilliver, against St Dunstan’s Church, publisher of some of Pope’s works, and in 1761, of J. Walker at Charing Cross. Cicero, under the name of Tully’s Head, hung at the door of Robert Dodsley, a famous bookseller in Pall Mall. ”

“ 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 universal use of sign-boards furnished employment to many painters of inferior rank, and occasionally even to great artists, who, either as a freak of genius, to win a wager, to crown a carouse, or perhaps to earn with ease a needed sum, painted a sign-board. ”

“ These signboards befit the streets which justify their metallic existence, and these streets the signboards which give them a local habitation and a name. Both of them are dreamily and wonderfully lapped in forgetfulness and decay. They pursue their way through the wood which they have invaded—but the wood refuses to rest. ”

“ It is well, however, to remember [69] that letters placed in the post take the chances of fortune, and, with the plainest of addresses, may, by the absence of the person or for some other cause, bring up in the Dead-Letter Office. Their resurrection there will depend upon their containing the full name of the sender as well as his address. If a letter is valuable enough to send, it is valuable enough to sign, even if the signature be double,—first the familiar or given name, and then, in the lower left-hand corner, the full name.
It is well to use always the name which is your legal signature. ”

“ Merchants' and manufacturers' samples are not, of course, strictly speaking, of the nature of correspondence, and their conveyance by post represents in some aspects an expansion of function. The main function of the Post Office is the distribution of letters, or, as it may be expressed generally, the distribution of any species of communication between persons, reduced to material form, whether as manuscript letters, postcards or circular letters, printed or written, or even in the form of newspapers. ”