My father died in his eighty-ninth year—a longevity not unprecedented in our family. So remarkable was his retention of mental power, that in this, his last illness, he devised a new process for ascertaining, by mental arithmetic, the incidence of Easter Sunday in any given year; a process which, at his desire, I put to the test of practice, with a result completely satisfactory.
To return to the subject of this narrative. In thus accepting the offer of assistance, I could not but feel that, notwithstanding all my protestations, I weakened my present claim to that great change, so long the object of my desire, since concession, however insufficient, could not be closely followed by further demand. Nevertheless, so great was the pressure upon me, so serious the danger of my breaking down altogether, that I had no alternative. Some estimate of my difficulties may be formed from the following simple statement. Though reference was made to me in all cases of serious difficulty, whatever their nature, and though the secretarial charge of the Money-Order Department was exclusively in my hands, the amount of assistance at my command hitherto was limited to my private secretary and four or five clerks, while that under Colonel Maberly consisted of a private secretary, an assistant-secretary, competent to act as an occasional deputy, and probably not less than fifty or sixty clerks. Still I naturally regarded the late accession to my force,—particularly as it gave me the aid of my brother—with great satisfaction.
[APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIX.]
PROGRESS OF REFORM FROM THE BEGINNING OF 1849 TO THE
MIDDLE OF 1851.
Having thus carried the general narrative to this important point, I pause to describe those concurrent proceedings[87] which could not be conveniently mentioned in their chronological order, remarking, however, that the chief improvements effected within the period have been mentioned as they took place, and that those of my readers who have little desire to know more on the subject may easily pass over so much as they please of what follows. For convenience I resort to classification.
MONEY ORDER DEPARTMENT.
Economy, Self Support.
Various measures of economy were adopted; not, for the most part, of sufficient importance to be mentioned in detail, though of considerable value in their aggregate effect. One, however, by its magnitude, claims distincter record, being the release for other duties of such a number of clerks as reduced the Money Order staff, in proportion to its amount of business, by nearly forty per cent.; an economy effected by the mere simplification of accounts and modes of procedure. Two others may be mentioned as curious, the first being a saving of probably about £800 a-year through the substitution for “guard books” of an apparatus invented by Mr. Walliker, one of the clerks (now Postmaster of Hull), and the second the saving of £700 a year by a mere reduction, and that not the first, in the size of the letter of advice. By the various improvements thus introduced into the Money Order Office since it came under my superintendence it was found—the accounts being at length for the first time balanced—that the annual loss of more than £10,000 had been converted into a small gain. It should be mentioned that, in fetching up the arrear of accounts, debts, which ought long since to have been claimed, were found owing by various deputy postmasters, and had to be recovered, in some instances, of their sureties; a proceeding sometimes involving much hardship. In one case, at Bilston, where the payment thus enforced amounted to £230, the postmaster had been dead some years.