Her Majesty's Mails

After all, however, the cases of blunder are exceptional; and as no really blind letters are found in the travelling offices, because no letters are posted here, little difficulty is felt, comparatively speaking, and nothing but patience and the Rosetta stone of experience are needed for the performance of the duty. The great majority of letters are like the great majority of people--ordinary, unexceptionable, and mediocre. It could not well be otherwise. In the railway post-office, however, much is learned from the habit of association. The officers, of course, take some degree of interest in the towns on his ride; for, almost domesticated on the rail, he becomes a sort of denizen of those towns he is constantly passing, and sees, or fancies he does, from the letters that arrive from them, a kind of corroboration of all he has settled in his mind with regard to them. Almost every town has its distinctive kind of letters. That town we just passed is manufacturing, and the letters are almost entirely confined to sober-looking advice-cards, circulars, prices current, and invoices, generally very similar in kind and appearance, in good-sized envelopes, with very plainly written or printed addresses. Now and then a lawyer's letter, written in a painfully distinct hand, or a thick, fat, banker's letter, groaning under the weight of bills and notes, escapes from company such as we have described; but still the letters sustain the town's real character.