Page:All the Year Round - Series 1 - Volume 1.djvu/199

Dickens.] RIGHT THROUGH THE POST. [June 18, 1859.] ] 91 and East Coast Mail; two sorting-offices and one tender for the North Mail (of which I was a part); and two other tenders employed for the intermediate mails. In two of the three sorting-offices in the train, the letters posted in London, or passing through London for the smaller towns on the line, and which have already undergone one divisional sortation at the Chief Office, are received, and again sorted for their final destination. In the third of the three sorting-offices in the train, the bags of cross-post letters from the towns arrived at on the road are received, sorted, and, in some cases, made-up and re-despatched, without the train having had to submit to a moment's delay, or to slacken its even pace of five-and-forty miles an hour. This is the Railway Post-office properly so called and into this department of the train being a privileged letter I was freely permitted to go.

The Railway Post-office was an exceedingly comfortable, well-furnished business carriage, broad as the gauge of the railway would allow, and as long as an ordinary room. The door was in the centre, having on its right a large window hole, shut up with a wooden shutter, and extending across nearly one-half of the carriage. Sometimes, the interior reminded me of a bagatelle-table, when I looked at the green cloth counters running along both ends, and nearly along the whole length of the back; sometimes, it reminded me of a large laundry, when I looked at the full bags lying unopened upon the floor, and the many empty bags (marked with the names of towns) hanging on pegs from the half wall on the left of the entrance door. Sometimes the hundred pigeon-holes and shelves which covered the three sides of the carriage immediately over the three counters, suggested an elaborate mahogany kitchen dresser, the spaces in which were being continually filled by maniac card-players, silently dealing out eternal, never-ending, ever-renewing packs of cards in a phantom game of whist.

As soon as the average speed of the train was attained, the bags on the floor were opened by the guard. Packets of letters, tied up with a string were thrown upon the back counter, to be divided amongst the three sorting clerks (the whole postal part of the train employs fourteen clerks, and six guards), dozens of newspapers, parcels, pill-boxes, sample-packets, thin cases of artificial flowers, rolls of music, and photographs done up in envelopes us large as tea-trays, were thrown upon the end counter at the head of the carriage; and the work began. Each man stood under a shaded globular lamp, shaking very much throughout his frame, and swaying to and fro like a circus-rider on his horse. The carriage is bright and glowing, and its speed is something between forty and fifty miles an hour. Letters are rapidly conveyed to the different pigeon-holes, sometimes high sometimes low, sometimes on one side, and then on the other; sometimes, with a little hesitation when the writing which tells the post town is not very clear (the name of the county being placed on the letter is rather an hindrance to the sorters than otherwise); sometimes, with a circular wave of the hand, when the mind is in doubt, for a moment, where to deposit the letter; nearly always, more with regard to a sorting system peculiar to the sorter, than the names of the different towns which appear over the pigeon-holes. One clerk devotes himself to the registered letters, which have to be entered on a printed list; and he stands in a half-stooping posture, at a little distance from the counter, with a quill pen in one hand, and a small square board, on which is stretched the paper, clasped firmly in the other; jotting down the names and addresses in a touch-and-go style, which long practice has adapted to the motion of a flying, wabbling platform, that passes over a mile in a minute. The third clerk, preferring to be seated at his work, pulls out a swivel seat from under the counter that looks very much like Westphalia ham.

After the guard has been busy, for a time, at the head end of the carriage, seemingly in tossing the newspapers and packets about, like a potato-washer over a tub of potatoes, he takes another turn at the bags, and makes up the sealed mail for the first post-station. When he has tied and scaled the dirty white skin bag, which contains the allowance of letters for one small town, and a score of smaller villages, he straps it up in a dark brown leather covering until it looks like a pedlar's pack, and then he proceeds to attach it to the external machinery the carriage. He is an experienced guard, familiar with every river, bridge, and point, who knows, by the sound of the roaring and clattering train, at what moment to "let down the net, and put out for delivery," as the printed instructions phrase it. The shutter of the large single window-hole is pushed down in its groove, and a gust of cold night air, laden with the scent of earth and grass, and trees, comes freshly into the hot and busy carriage. The guard looks out along the dark line of rising and falling hedges, and through the trees at the low horizon, for some expected signal light, and then proceeds to the door, which he pushes back in its side groove. Reaching out his arm round the window side of the carriage, he drags in an iron bar, that swings by several hinges, at the extremity of which he fastens the packed mail, now lying on the floor, by means of a spring, and casts it away from the carriage over the rails, where it drops and hangs suspended at right angles, like a heavy bait put out to catch fish. This operation completed, he returns to the open, window, where he pushes down a mechanical arrangement, which forms a projecting receiving net, and which sounds, in its descent, as if the whole carriage were falling to pieces. After a few seconds' suspense, the bait appears to have taken; the carriage passes under several bags of letters, which are suspended from the postal station, and over a similar net, projecting from the station also; the machinery of the railway acts upon the machinery of the carriage; the one bag drops into the roadside net or into a roadside ditch, as any