Page:The Post Office of India and its story.djvu/115

Rh would be considered impolite to address an English gentleman in the vernacular by his mere name. Such a thing is never done. Whatever address is given by the writer, the Indian postman has his special methods of noting it. He seldomsseldom [sic] knows English, and when names are read out to him by the delivery clerk he scrawls his own description on the back in a script that can only be read by himself. A well-known judge of the Calcutta High Court, Sir John Stevens, was much amused to find that the words "Old Stevens Sahib" were constantly written in the vernacular on the back of his letters, this being done to distinguish him from his younger colleague, Mr. Justice Stephens.

A story recently received from the Persian Gulf explains how it is that letters sometimes fail to reach their destinations despite the greatest care on the part of the Post Office. The incident is worthy of the Arabian Nights, and I will quote the account given by the sub-postmaster of Linga.

"On the 8th of December in the year 1912 a well-known merchant of Linga, Aga Abbasalli by name, informed me that his agents at Bombay, Karachi and other places in India had informed him by telegraph that for the last two weeks they had received no mails from him. He asked for an explanation from me for this, indirectly holding me responsible and even threatening to report me to you, for he maintained that the letters he sent to the Post for many years past had, at least, always reached their destination, if late, and that he could not now for his life imagine as to how it was that the several letters which he himself sent to the Post, by bearer, for the last two weeks, were lost during transmission. As Abbasalli was known to me, I sent word to him through