Part 20 (1/2)

”I don't see them,” interrupted Miss Lillycrop.

”There, that's a northern division boy who has just backed against you, ma'am.”

The boy referred to turned, apologised, and gathering the letters for the northern division from the sorter at their elbow, moved on to gather more from others.

”The division letters,” continued Bright, ”are then conveyed to other sorters, who subdivide them into roads, and then the final sorting takes place for the various towns. We have a staff of about a thousand sorters, a.s.sistant sorters, and boy-sorters in this (Inland) office alone, who have been, or are being, carefully trained for the work.

Some are smart, and some of course are slow. They are tested occasionally. When a sorter is tested he is given a pack of five hundred cards--dummies--to represent letters. A good man will sort these in thirteen or fifteen minutes. There are always sure to be a few mis-sorts, even in _our_ well-regulated family--that is, letters sorted to the wrong sections or divisions. Forty mis-sorts in the five hundred is considered very bad work.”

”But what if a sorter does not happen to know the division to which any particular letter belongs?” asked Miss Lillycrop.

”He ought to know,” replied her guide, ”because all the sorters have to undergo a strict examination once a year as to their knowledge of towns and villages throughout England.”

”Indeed! but,” persisted Miss Lillycrop, ”what does he do with a letter if he chances to forget?”

”Why, he must get other sorters to help him.”

”And what happens if he finds a letter so badly addressed that he cannot read it?”

”Sends it to the blind division; we shall come to that presently,” said Mr Bright. ”Meanwhile we shall visit the hospital I need scarcely explain to you that the hospital is the place to which wounded letters and packages are taken to be healed. Here it is.”

The party now stood beside a table, at which several clerks--we might almost say surgeons--were at work, busy with sealing-wax and string.

The patients were a wondrous lot, and told eloquently of human carelessness. Here were found letters containing articles that no envelope of mere paper could be expected to hold--such as bunches of heavy keys, articles of jewellery, etcetera, which had already more than half escaped from their covers. There were also frail cardboard boxes, so squeezed and burst that their contents were protruding, and parcels containing worsted and articles of wearing apparel, which had been so carelessly put up as to have come undone in the mail-bags. All these things were being re-tied, re-folded, patched up here and there with sealing-wax, or put into new covers, by the postal surgeons, and done with as much care, too, as though the damage had been caused by the Post-Office rather than by carelessness in the public.

But among these invalided articles were a few whose condition accidentally revealed attempts to contravene the postal laws. One letter which had burst completely open revealed a pill-box inside, with ”Dinner Pills” on the outside. On examination, the pills turned out to be two sixpences wrapped up in a sc.r.a.p of paper, on which was written--”Thought you had no money to get a stamp with, so sent you some.” It is contrary to regulations to send coin by post without registering the letter. The unfortunate receiver would have to pay eightpence, as a registration fee, for this s.h.i.+lling!

While the party was looking at the hospital work another case was discovered. A book-packet came open and revealed a letter inside. But still further, the letter was found to contain sixpence in silver, sent to defray postage when the book should be returned. Here was a double sin! No letter, or writing of the nature of a letter, is allowed to go by book post, and coin may not be sent unregistered. In this case the book would be forwarded at letter-rate, and the 8 pence registration fee would be charged for the coin--the whole amounting to 6 s.h.i.+llings, 6 pence.

”If the public would only attend,” observed Mr Bright, in commenting on these facts, ”to the regulations laid down for their guidance by the Post-Office--as detailed in our Directories and Postal Guides--such errors would seldom occur, for I believe that things of this sort are the result of ignorance rather than dishonesty.”

”Now, ma'am,” he continued, ”we come to the blind officers.”

There were several of those gentlemen, whose t.i.tle, we presume, was satirically expressive of the extraordinary sharpness of their eyes and intellects. They were seated at a table, engaged in examining addresses so illegible, so crabbed, so incomplete, and so ineffably ridiculous, that no man of ordinary mental capacity could make head or tail of them.

All the princ.i.p.al London and Provincial Directories, Guides, and Gazetteers were ranged in front of the blind officers, to a.s.sist them in their arduous labours, and by the aid of these, and their own extensive knowledge of men and places, they managed to dispose of letters for which a stranger would think it impossible to find owners.

”What would you make of that address, now?” said Mr Bright, presenting a letter to Miss Lillycrop for inspection.

”It looks like Cop--Cup--no--it begins with a C at all events.--What think you of it, May?” said the puzzled lady.

”It seems to me something like Captain Troller of Rittler Bunch,” said May, laughing. ”It is quite illegible.”

”Not _quite_,” said one of the blind officers, with a smile. ”It is-- Comptroller of the Returned Letter Branch. Some one making inquiries, no doubt, after a lost letter addressed as badly as this one.”

Having looked at a few more of the letters that were then pa.s.sing under examination, Mr Bright showed them a book in which were copied facsimiles of addresses which had pa.s.sed through the post. Some of these were pictorial--embracing quaint devices and caricatures, most of them in ink, and some in colours, all of which had been traced by a gentleman in the office with great skill. One that struck May as being very original was the representation of an artist painting the portrait of the Queen. Her Majesty was depicted as sitting for her portrait, and the canvas on the easel before which the artist stood was made the exact size of the postage-stamp.

While the ladies were examining this book of literary curiosities, Mr Bright took occasion to comment with pardonable pride on the working of the Post-Office.

”You see, ma'am,” he said, ”we do our best for the public--though many of 'em have no idea of it. We don't send letters to the Returned Letter Branch till we've tried, as you see, to get the correct addresses, and until two separate letter-carriers have attempted to deliver them.