At a farewell dinner given to Prince Ranjitsinhji in 1908 a letter was read out from Mr. Buckmaster, K.C., in which were related the triumphs of a village postman. He said: “I envy you the pleasure of the evening, and I sincerely wish that it were possible for me to be present. The last time I had the honour of meeting his Highness was at a village cricket match fifteen years ago. The occasion will always be memorable in the annals of country cricket, for he was bowled by the village postman for nineteen runs. He never knew that the postman had been put into careful training for the performance for weeks, and that he had been driven all round his district so as to avoid the exhaustion of his energies by long walking or too long lingering in the hospitable kitchens of the country.”
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. These he hurled at the front door when occasion demanded. An original postman's knock. Certainly this was another resourceful postman.
A rural postman of Newport who has recently retired from the Service gave notice of approach in this fashion. He could whistle by the aid of his fingers in such a way as to make himself heard from parish to parish. And he carried an umbrella which it was said would shelter a village population nicely.
Wherever he may be, in northern latitudes, in the tropics, or in the town and country districts of the United Kingdom, the postman carries about with him the proud consciousness that he is “On his Majesty's Service.” Everything must give way before him. Even when on occasions the streets of London are blocked to everybody else, to allow a royal procession or a Lord Mayor's Show to pass, the policeman makes room for the postman. These are perhaps the proudest moments of a postman's life, provided always he is indifferent to the doubtful compliments of the London crowd.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE POST OFFICE GUIDE
It is wonderful how persistent are certain prejudices in the minds of the British public. With vast numbers of people it is an accepted fact that Bradshaw is unintelligible, and a book only for experts in travel. The A B C, with its delightful appeal in the title to the simple-minded, was brought out to meet the needs of such people, but to anybody who has grasped one or two elementary facts concerning our railway system there is no doubt whatever which is the more interesting volume. Bradshaw will trace for you the whole of your journey, the places you pass, the stations you stop at, and the junctions at which you may have to change. Indeed a love of Bradshaw for its own sake often develops in the mind of a man who can travel in imagination, and we have all probably known instances of delightful folk, almost entirely of one sex, who can amuse themselves by the hour over the study of time-tables.
Another accepted prejudice is that the Post Office Guide is obscure and useless for the average citizen. It is rarely seen on a lady's writing-table, though the need for the information it contains is probably felt by her almost every day. She will resort to any expedient to obtain enlightenment about Post Office methods short of consulting the best authority on the matter. With all our vaunted education we hear people still object that they do not know where to look for what they want, and they seem astonished if you inform them that the book has an index. They object to the size of the volume; they want the information they require to be obtained without the slightest effort: our numerous books of reference are causing us to lose the sense of joy in the mere pursuit of knowledge. A proper Post Office Guide should go in our waistcoat pocket or reticule, and if the Post Office cannot tell us in a small compass what to do it is out of date, and the sooner the institution is managed on modern business lines the better for everybody. That is the sort of criticism we hear of a book which only requires to be known to be appreciated. Besides, there is a pocket edition published.
Let me take first this matter of the size of the volume which frightens many people. The book contains nearly 900 pages. But 370 odd of these make up a list of the provincial offices in the United Kingdom, while an additional 100 contain the time-tables of the various mails to and from London. Another 100 pages give directions and time-tables for the London district, and about 150 pages are devoted to time-tables and directories for foreign mails. The printed instructions, therefore, concerning the vast postal, telegraph, telephone, savings bank, money order, and postal order systems are limited to about 150 pages, and there are no advertisements. This last fact, I admit, diminishes its interest to the Bradshaw enthusiast, because part of the charm of his volume is that he can select the hotels where he shall stay on his imaginary journeys. But my point is that by far the larger portion of the book is composed of time-tables and directories which are both useful and interesting, and that, considering the huge mass of business undertaken by the Post Office, the section devoted to explaining the regulations is small, and expressed clearly and concisely. There was a delightful picture in Punch some time ago of two ladies in a shop debating what to purchase. Then one said to the other: “You should try so-and-so; it is so highly spoken of in the advertisements.” Now this lady's interest in the Post Office could never be stimulated by the recommendations in the Postal Guide. There is not even a preliminary puff in the shape of a preface. The book, for instance, begins with simply an unadorned statement of the basis of the mail service.
“The prepaid rate of postage is as follows:—