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

Mr. Norway quotes from a letter written by a Spanish traveller who visited England in 1808. What he says will help us to realise how much the Packet Service meant to Falmouth. Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella was the traveller, and he had just arrived by the packet at Falmouth when he wrote the letter. This is what he says: “The perpetual stir and bustle in this inn is as surprising as it is wearisome. Doors opening and shutting, bells ringing, voices calling to the waiter from every quarter, while he cries 'Coming' to one room and hurries away to another. Everybody is in a hurry here: either they are going off in the packets and are hastening their preparations to embark, or they have just arrived and are impatient to be on the road homeward. Every now and then a carriage rattles up to the door with a rapidity which makes the very house shake. The man who cleans the boots is running in one direction, the barber with his powder-bag in another. Here goes the barber's boy with his hot water and razors: there comes the clean linen from the washerwoman, and the hall is full of porters and sailors bringing up luggage or bearing it away. Now you hear a horn blow because the post is coming in, and in the middle of the night you are awakened by another because it is going out. Nothing is done in England without a noise, and yet noise is the only thing they forget in the bill.”