The Parcel Post regulations are set forth in great detail: there are so many things which evil-disposed persons would like to send us by post if they could get them accepted over the counter. Among such articles are explosive substances and live animals. Some may think the former term includes the latter: it probably would inside a postal packet. The special permission of the Postmaster-General has to be obtained for the despatch knowingly of even a flea. A special exemption is made in the case of live bees, provided they are sent in suitable receptacles, and so packed as to avoid all risk of injury to the Postmaster-General. Wasps are not allowed even in suitable receptacles: the risk is evidently too great. Besides, there is no public demand for wasps.
Much advance has been made in recent years in the development of Express Delivery services. I do not think they are as well known as they ought to be: they are not “spoken of highly in the advertisements,” only a simple statement of what you can do when in a hurry appears in the Post Office Guide. But the broad effect of the regulations is that with some increase in your expenditure you can have practically a private postal despatch and delivery service of your own. A special messenger will take a message or packet for you direct to any distance at the rate of 3d. a mile. Living animals, including dogs, may be sent by this means, also liquids. This is only one way in which you can be independent of the ordinary mail service. I suspect that many persons who have not a Postal Guide in their possession are ignorant of the fact that a letter weighing 4 oz. may be handed in at a passenger station for immediate transmission by railway. This is a convenience to many people who have lost the post and are near a railway station. Then you can use the telephone to speed up your mail service. You can telephone a letter to a post office, and it will be taken down in writing there and despatched by express delivery.
If you lose your train at a big railway station the company will readily provide you with “a special” at a cost prohibitive to most men's purses. If, on the other hand, you lose the post, the Postmaster-General can at once provide you with “a special” also, but it will only be at a cost slightly in excess of the ordinary charge, and, unlike the case of the railway train, your post “special” will probably arrive before the ordinary mail.
There is one soul-stirring regulation for the Express Delivery services: it is hidden away in small print at the bottom of a page. What would not Selfridge's or Whiteley's make of such an announcement! “Postmasters may arrange for the conduct of a person to an address by an express messenger.” “To see a man home” is a duty which can now be vicariously put on the Post Office.
But it is not my purpose to republish the provisions of the Guide in these pages: I want only to suggest to my readers that they may lose many opportunities to avail themselves of the various services through ignorance. For, as I have already hinted, the Postmaster-General is like “Bobs” in Rudyard Kipling's verses, “'E does not advertise,” and many of the admirable things which he is prepared to do for the public remain practically undeveloped because of his modesty. How powerful would be the appeal to the public if he could follow the example of the Bedminster Down Penny Bank and advertise the Post Office Savings Bank with an effective poster such as the one on the opposite page.
To reach the heart of the people the appeal must be in the people's own idioms. There is nothing of this kind in the Postal Guide: you stumble across conveniences for the first time in its pages entirely by accident—conveniences, perhaps, which you have only imagined in dreams and have perhaps thought of asking Mr. Henniker Heaton to advocate. And all the time they were in existence, buried in the pages of the Postal Guide.
But the man who delights in Bradshaw should find the most entertaining portion of the volume in the list of offices and time-tables. By itself this section is an admirable lesson in geography.
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