Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/50

36 like the dew and with the dew. The distillery of the still skies above, and the distillery of the Penny Post beneath work hand in hand through the quiet hours of the night; one dropping out of the starlit atmosphere gentle dews, the other dropping for the sleeping families of the land the welcome thoughts of wakeful memory—thoughts that are to ten thousand breakfast circles in the morning what the dews are to ten thousand fields listening in thirsty silence for their fall. If London were the local centre, every family in England would be within a night's gallop of the iron horse with the London mail-bag strapped to his back; so that at the usual breakfast hour the postman might drop in a letter to season the morning meal in the most distant home in the realm. No citizen of a foreign country sojourning in England can fail to admire the quiet and beautiful working of this postal system. And thousands of foreigners have admired it to a practical effect. They have carried back to their own countries descriptions and impressions of its dispensation which have moved their governments to adopt the same system at different degrees of approximation. Cheap postage is the order of the day everywhere. Even the countries lying beyond the boundary line of Christian civilization are copying slowly the example of England; and the day may yet come, after the nations have saved some of the millions