There are hundreds of village post offices which would answer to this description; we all go straight to the post office when in a strange place, if we are in the slightest difficulty. The post office is there “On his Majesty's Service” to get us out of trouble. Unhappy is the village without a post office. Yet there is, or was until recently, a village on the edge of the Norfolk marshlands where there was no doctor for seven miles, no telegraph office for delivery within five miles, and where, until a very late date, the only village post-box was a slit in a hollow elm against the churchyard. In such villages as this, the news of the world comes through the postman. If he has no letter to deliver in the place, the news as well as he stops away.
Writing in 1897, the author of the delightful Pages from a Private Diary spoke of the effect of the increase of postal facilities on the sluggish-minded country-folk.
“People who are accustomed to the business-like promptitude of the young men and maidens in town offices have little idea of the casual way in which things are managed with us. A month or two since, having to register a letter containing a small present for the golden wedding of an old friend which had reached me too late for our own despatch, I drove to a village on the railway where the mails leave a few hours later. The following dialogue ensued:—
“Postmaster. Do you know how old I am?
“I. No; are you seventy-five?
“Postmaster. Seventy-five! I'm as old as Mr. Gladstone. Don't look it, don't I? No, I mayn't look it, but I am. I've been postmaster here for fifty years or more. Yes, I ain't so young as I have-a-been. Good-day, sir.
“I. But I want a letter registered.
“Postmaster. Registered! Well, I hardly know how. You see, I'm an old man now. Oh yes! I've registered 'em in my day, but I don't somehow like the responsibility. No, I don't feel as if at my age I ought to take the responsibility. You see I've been postmaster here man and boy for....
“In the end I had to take the letter home again.”
There is one thing which you will rarely obtain in a rural post office, and that is incivility. This as a rule is associated with “the business-like promptitude of the young men and maidens in town offices,” and the country postmaster's manners are often superior to his intelligence.