The boy messenger is especially interesting as a human type. He comes into a public office raw and untrained, and he usually leaves it a well-disciplined and decent-mannered man. If it unfortunately happens that discarded boy messengers frequently join the ranks of the unemployed, or even of the unemployable, it is difficult to believe that they can ever become hooligans. How is the boy licked into shape? First of all, in any large body of men or boys there is a recognised standard of conduct; even the boy who lives in the street is conscious of a standard of the street; but of course in a public office the standard is maintained also by rules and regulations. Perhaps we shall know these boys better, and besides obtain little glimpses into their lives, if I let them tell their own stories, by means of our old friend the written explanation.
The special feature of the boys' explanations is that there is nothing studied about their composition. As a rule, they are simple, direct, and unlaboured. They dispense with such trifles as punctuation, orthography, or syntax, but you feel when you are reading the documents that the boy is stating the facts as he knows them. It has been said that “it is better not to know too much than to know the things that ain't so,” and we forgive the form of this sentence because of the way it grips with the situation: it closes with the truth; there is nothing to be said in opposition to it, but its form is the form of the half-educated. So it is with the literary efforts of the boy messenger: they are fresh, human, and free from artifice. “Are you free from any bodily injury or defect?” was asked of a youthful applicant for a boy messengership. And he wrote down proudly, “Yes; I am in fine condition.”
Here is a snipping from official papers. It is on the printed form used in all cases of the written explanation.
“Messenger G——: To furnish your explanation as to your conduct towards an old gentleman in —— Street this evening.”
“The Postmaster.
“Sir,—As I was passing through —— Street last night an old gentleman stood in the street. I threw a potato at the gentleman. I am very sorry, and I hope it will not occur again.”
There is no beating about the bush here. As Mr. Birrell said of Dr. Newman: “That love of putting the case most strongly against himself is only one of the lovely characteristics of the man.”
Another young hopeful had the misfortune to smash one of the office windows. An indignant Superintendent wanted to know the reason why. The lad made a clean breast of it. He filled in the departmental form giving all particulars, and he finished up with a fine piece of pleading. “I admit I threw the stone, but if the other boy had not ducked, the window would have been all right.”
The boys are indeed often very smart in their replies. One was asked to explain “why you were seen walking across the sorting-room with an unlighted cigarette in your mouth.” The answer was: “Because it is forbidden for me to light it in the office.”
As an instance of the smart messenger boy, let me tell a story. A young man, having missed a train at Victoria, despatched, with faint hope of its being delivered, a telegram to a young lady whom he should have met at East Croydon Station. The only possible address was of course “Miss X., waiting at East Croydon Station,” and great was his surprise when he found the young lady awaiting him, as the telegram had directed, at Reigate. The young lady told him she was one of a great number of ladies who were on the platform, but the boy, on looking round them, came up to her at once with “A telegram for you, miss.” Curious to know how he had detected the right addressee, she asked him the question, and he replied, “Because you looked so downhearted, miss.”