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1
435
Her Majesty's Mails
·
William Lewins
261
THE
BLIND
LETTER-OFFICE
is
the
receptacle
for
all
illegible,
misspelt,
misdirected,
or
insufficiently
addressed
letters
or
packets.
Here
the
clerk
or
clerks,
selected
from
amongst
the
most
efficient
and
experienced
officers,
guess
at
what
ordinary
intelligence
would
readily
denominate
insoluble
riddles.
Large
numbers
of
letters
are
posted
daily
with
superscriptions
which
the
sorters
cannot
decipher,
and
which
the
great
majority
of
people
would
not
be
able
to
read.
Others,
again,
are
received
with
perhaps
only
the
name
of
some
small
village,
the
writers
thinking
it
a
work
of
supererogation
to
add
some
neighbouring
town,
or
even
a
county.
Numberless,
for
instance,
are
the
letters
bearing
such
addresses
as
"John
Smith,
gardener,
Flowerdale,"
or
"Throgmorton
Hall,
Worcestershire."
Circulars,
by
the
thousand,
are
posted
in
London
and
other
large
towns
without
hesitancy,
and
with
the
greatest
confidence
in
the
"final
perseverance"
principle
of
the
Post-Office
people,
with
addresses
not
more
explicit
than
the
foregoing.
Many
country
gentlemen
would
seem
to
cherish
the
idea
that
the
names
of
their
mansions
should
be
known
equally
far
and
near
from
their
manorial
acres,
and
somehow
they
seem
to
inoculate
their
correspondents
with
the
same
absurd
notion.
If,
however,
it
be
possible
to
reduce
the
hieroglyphics
on
some
strange
letter
to
ordinary
every-day
English,
or
find,
from
diligent
search
in
his
library
of
reference,
information
relative
to
imperfectly-addressed
letters
(information
which
might
have
been
given
much
more
easily
by
the
senders),
our
readers
may
be
sure
that
the
cunning
gentleman
of
the
Blind
Office,
justly
known
for
his
patience
and
sagacity,
will
do
it,
unless,
indeed,
the
letter
be
"stone
blind,"
or
hopelessly
incomplete.
As
a
genuine
example
of
stone-blind
letters,
take
the
following,
the
first
of
a
batch
which
has
been
known
to
pass
through
the
blind-room
of
the
General
Post-Office:--
Marker
Marker
Fine marker
White-out
Fine white-out
Circle
Paint
Unmarker
Hand
Scalpel
Dice
Sieve
Purify
Undo
Redo
Start over
