I did not make further inquiries, for I might have been told that it was a gangway or a plank that he was supplying to connect the end of the 200 feet with the decks of steamers.
THE STORY OF A POST-BOX.
During the evening I heard an animated discussion between several of the Emu Bay residents about the disgraceful manner in which they had been treated by the postal authorities in that district. ‘You know,’ said one of them, ‘the behaviour of that old woman they’ve made into post-mistress ought to be reported. The hardest work these post-masters and post-mistresses have to do is when they get out of bed to draw their pay. They don’t care for us not a bit. Why, they won’t do anything on Sundays. When the “brake” comes along at night, why, the driver has to stop his horses, and take a lamp and sort the mails for himself.’ That this accusation had some truth in it I can vouch from my own experience, for over and over again I have had to hold the reins of the horses while the coachman was manipulating a heap of letter-bags, which he found in a box outside the post-office. At night-time, when it was freezing and blowing, I found this very trying. No doubt the coachman found it more so.
Here a defender of the postal authorities gained a hearing by reference to the poorness of their pay.
‘How can you expect anybody to do anything when they get nothing for doing it?’ he remarked.
‘Ah, but remember that new post-box we had—that one down at the corner. Why, it was perfectly scandalous. When it was put up I stuck a letter in it for Tom Gadesden, down at the Leven, asking him about some horses he had to sell. As Tom didn’t write back I sent another, which I knew was posted because I put it in myself. Still there was no answer. Three days afterwards Tom came up here, and I asked him if he was short of ink and paper down at the Leven. “What do you mean?” says he. “Well, I mean I made you an offer for them two colts you had,” says I. “Did you?” says he; “the colts is sold, and I never seed any offer from you.” That set me asking, and I found that there was a lot of people who had been posting in that box and their letters had never arrived. You remember, Bill,’ said the speaker, pointing to one of the company, ‘you lost a letter in that box?’
‘Quite true,’ says Bill, nodding his head.
‘So I went to ask the post-mistress how it was, that when we posted letters at Emu Bay folks never got them—you ought to have heard the pow-wow that went on in that office. She bristled up like a porcupine, and said I had accused her of stealing people’s letters—she’d report me to Launceston. “If ever I’d posted the letters they went in the bag with the rest of the letters; and what did I mean going about trying to take away a poor old woman’s character?” After that she called me all the names she could lay her tongue to, and finished off by bursting out crying. I can tell you I was sorry that I’d been to make inquiries. I expected every minute she would have jumped at me and clawed my hair.
‘Well, after that I didn’t know what to do. It got noised round that I’d been slandering the old woman down at the post-office, and people were saying I ought to be ashamed of myself.
‘All that I could do was to prove I was right, and after me and six or seven of my mates talking it over—it was in this very room—we agreed to post a newspaper to one another, and then see if we got them. Well, next night, after it had got nearly dark—for we didn’t want it to be known what we were after—we all went each of us with eight papers tied in a handkerchief up to the box. You know we were then quite sure that the papers had been posted. That was sixty-four papers we put in, do you see? The night after we all met, and what do you think?—Well, there wasn’t a hanged one of us had ever received a paper.