“I had a pain in my leg which came on me all of a sudden, but I am sorry for this offence.”
“We were all whistling at the time but we made no noise.”
“I was watching an accident and had no idea what time it was, but I will watch that I stand and talk at no other accident.”
Another in rather an aggrieved mood says: “If you knew what it is to take half-an-hour to eat half-a-slice of bread you would know what it was to have a gumboil.” We think we understand.
Yet another: “He was telling me a story and I called him a liar, only I used stronger language.”
“I was taking a moonlight walk with my fiasco,” was the explanation of one boy.
And one boy asks for a day's leave. “I beg to apply for a holiday to attend my grandfather's funeral. He died of senile decay.”
Another boy's explanation of his delay in delivering a telegram was: “I went there and back as quick as I could and I will never let it occur again.”
The Post Office has from the earliest times drawn upon the boy population of this country to do a large portion of its work. The postboys were carrying letters across country three hundred years ago, though in many cases the term “boy” was merely an official designation, and the individual was nearer his second than his first childhood. The labour is cheap—that of course is an advantage in the eyes of the Treasury—but there is also a peculiar fitness in the employment of the young in work which above all things demands quickness, alertness, and a capacity for endurance.