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1
435
Her Majesty's Mails
·
William Lewins
256
The
window,
with
tremendous
gape,
is
assaulted
with
showers
of
papers
which
fly
thicker
and
faster
than
the
driven
snow.
Now
it
is
that
small
boys
of
eleven
and
twelve
years
of
age,
panting,
Sinbad-like,
under
the
weight
of
huge
bundles
of
newspapers,
manage
somehow
to
dart
about
and
make
rapid
sorties
into
other
ranks
of
boys,
utterly
disregarding
the
cries
of
the
official
policemen,
who
vainly
endeavour
to
reduce
the
tumult
into
something
like
post-office
order.
If
the
lads
cannot
quietly
and
easily
disembogue,
they
will
whiz
their
missiles
of
intelligence
over
other
people's
heads,
now
and
then
sweeping
off
hats
and
caps
with
the
force
of
shot.
The
gathering
every
moment
increases
in
number
and
intensifies
in
purpose;
arms,
legs,
sacks,
baskets,
heads,
bundles,
and
woollen
comforters--for
whoever
saw
a
veritable
newspaper-boy
without
that
appendage?--seem
to
be
getting
into
a
state
of
confusion
and
disagreeable
communism,
and
"yet
the
cry
is
still
they
come."
Heaps
of
papers
of
widely-opposed
political
views
are
thrown
in
together;
no
longer
placed
carefully
in
the
openings,
they
are
now
sent
in
in
sackfuls
and
basketfuls,
while
over
the
heads
of
the
surging
crowd
were
flying
back
the
empty
sacks,
thrown
out
of
the
office
by
the
porters
inside.
Semi-official
legends,
with
a
very
strong
smack
of
probability
about
them,
tell
of
sundry
boys
being
thrown
in,
seized,
emptied,
and
thrown
out
again
void.
As
six
o'clock
approaches
still
nearer
and
nearer,
the
turmoil
increases
more
perceptibly,
for
the
intelligent
British
public
is
fully
alive
to
the
awful
truth
that
the
Post-Office
officials
never
allow
a
minute
of
grace,
and
that
"Newspaper
Fair"
must
be
over
when
the
last
stroke
of
six
is
heard.
One,
in
rush
files
of
laggard
boys
who
have
purposely
loitered,
in
the
hope
of
a
little
pleasurable
excitement;
two,
and
grown
men
hurry
in
with
their
last
sacks;
three,
the
struggle
resembles
nothing
so
much
as
a
pantomimic
mêlée;
four,
a
Babel
of
tongues
vociferating
desperately;
five,
final
and
furious
showers
of
papers,
sacks,
and
bags;
and
six,
when
all
the
windows
fall
like
so
many
swords
of
Damocles,
and
the
slits
close
with
such
a
sudden
and
simultaneous
snap,
that
we
naturally
suppose
it
to
be
a
part
of
the
Post-Office
operations
that
attempts
should
be
made
to
guillotine
a
score
of
hands;
and
then
all
is
over
so
far
as
the
outsiders
are
concerned.
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