Page:The life and letters of Sir John Henniker Heaton bt. (IA lifelettersofsi00port).pdf/253

 him to use his influence to get the parcel post reduced. To one of them he replied:

I have been endeavouring to persuade the mandarins at St Martin's-le-Grand to meet your views (and that of thousands of others) in regard to soldier's parcels. They blame the Treasury. I have a question down to-morrow in the House of Commons, and I have reason to believe that I shall get a sympathetic if I cannot get a favourable answer.

It would be a grand thing to convey all parcels for Tommy Atkins for 1d. each.

H. H. was always interested in seeing any new invention for stamping postmarks or safeguarding letters. Weird and wonderful were the devices that would occasionally arrive at Eaton Square, and almost block up the hall and staircase to the intense indignation of an elderly butler.

Suggestions, some useful, some useless, arrived by nearly every post, and that hardy annual, a petition for Halfpenny Postage, arrived duly at the season of Postal Estimates and never failed to evoke H. H.'s condemnation.

A letter reached him posted in America with the simple address:

The many charming anonymous letters of thanks that reached H. H. were a great pleasure to him,