The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

There is more justice in the complaint of a man who claimed £2 compensation because a letter containing no value from the woman he was engaged to marry had failed to reach him. In his own words: “That letter I would not have missed for anything— through that I lost a wife. After returning from a nine months' voyage my intended wife was not to be found, and I do not consider £2 full compensation.” There is no doubt, however, that such a sum would have gone a considerable way towards repairing the loss, but the Department was obliged to inform the man that the Postmaster-General could not be held responsible for the loss of the lady. She was not a registered packet. The form of inquiry which is handed to applicants for missing postal packets does not err by asking too little. A man had carefully and laboriously filled up answers to all the questions relevant and irrelevant to his particular loss, and then he came to the concluding sentence: “Any other observations should be made here.” At this point, his pent-up feelings got the better of him, and he wrote simply “Damn.” Another story bearing on the complexity of this same form tells of the case of a man who in filling up the form had omitted certain important particulars. The form was returned for completion, only to come back from the postmaster to this effect, that “Mr. —— after filling up the form (in the first instance) had had a fit and died.”