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

The Union Castle Line to Madeira and the Cape provides the mail service to South Africa, and ships like the Edinburgh Castle and the Balmoral Castle, which sail from Southampton, make very swift passages. But the catalogue is a long one of oversea contracts, and besides there is little variety in the nature of the service. There is an interesting table in the Post Office Guide showing the approximate time taken in the transmission of correspondence from London to certain places abroad. According to this list the longest journey for a letter now figures as 44 days, and that is to the Fiji Islands via Suez, but if you send it by Vancouver the journey is reduced to 30 days. The longest journey without an alternative route is to Hobart, 34 days, but Brisbane and Manila run it very close, 33 and 32 days respectively. Bombay is under 15 days and Cape Town is 17 days. We are practically within a month's touch on paper of the whole civilised world. We have travelled far since the 25th of December 1815, when Charles Lamb wrote to his friend Thomas Manning, who was in China: “Dear old friend and absentee, this is Christmas Day, 1815, with us: what it may be with you I don't know— the 12th of June next year, perhaps.” Lamb's idea was that in writing to a friend it was the day of the receipt of the letter that was the thing to be concerned about, and how difficult it was to be with your friend in imagination six months hence. When your friend was reading your words “all your opinions will be out of date, your jokes obsolete, your puns rejected with fastidiousness as wit of the last age.” But thirty days is a different matter, and even our friends in New Zealand or the Fiji Islands seem only in the next street compared with similar conditions a hundred years ago.