“Strand.” “Squares.” “Clerkenwell.”
“Islington.” “Kingsland.”
“Camden Town.”
“City.” “West End.”
“Westminster.”
“Pimlico.”
As soon as we had rapidly glanced over the tarpaulin-covered-in arrangements above described, which had been made for the reception of parcels for London, we hurried across the five sets of rails that separate the platforms of the in and out trains to the “Parcels Delivery Office,” both departments of which we found had been exclusively devoted for the week to the reception and despatch of parcels from London to the country. On the floor of each of the offices we have already described we saw piled to a considerable height masses of parcels, which it was evident could scarcely be despatched as rapidly as they were arriving. The clerks, the assistants, as well as the extra persons who had been engaged, all appeared more or less exhausted. The accountant—the recording angel of the establishment—looked deadly pale, while the voices of the chanting porters were, to a pitiable degree, weaker and fainter than when we had last heard them; indeed, the whole establishment had evidently been overwhelmed with parcels which the Company’s servants were still collecting, receiving, lifting, driving, wheeling, turning, twisting, weighing, pasting, labelling, and hallooing at, and yet, notwithstanding the rapidity with which they were despatched by rails, vans, waggons, carts, and busses, they were arriving, if possible, faster than ever!
Now, after this afflicting description of the plague of parcels which during Christmas week annually infests and infects the Euston Station, our readers will, no doubt, feel somewhat alarmed when we state that we propose to inform them in detail of the contents of each!
The job, however, is easily performed, for in these parcels there are neither gold, silver, jewels, pictures, nor books—they contain neither covering for the body nor consolation for the mind—they belong neither to the vegetable nor to the mineral kingdom—in short, they are simply composed of good, plain, honest eatables, bequeathed by British hearts, addressed by British hands to British stomachs of all classes of society.
But as our arterial blood is of one colour, while that which returns through our veins is of another, so is there a most remarkable difference in the character of these flowing and ebbing parcels: all those which have come into London being either deceased turkeys or game, while the outgoing or outward-bound parcels are, with scarcely an exception, composed of barrels of live oysters, several of which are accompanied by a good heavy basket of fish. The number of barrels thus despatched from Euston Station within twenty-four hours amounted to 5009, and, as a hundred oysters are usually packed in each barrel, it is strange to think of half a million of “natives” leaving London in one day for the express purpose of wishing “a merry Christmas and a happy new year” to those whose hares, pheasants, partridges, rabbits, turkeys, and chickens have inanimately come to the metropolis on the very same day on the very same errand! To the above “bills of fare” we may add, that during last Christmas week no less than 450 waggons of live cattle arrived at Camden Station within the space of twenty-four hours.