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

At home we grumble at the Post Office, and are irritated at the delay of a single post, but if we are living abroad, or have friends and relations in distant countries, the very word “mail” has a sweet sound in our ear. If we spoke in rhythm, as people sometimes do when labouring under strong emotion, we should say of the Post Office in a foreign land or when parted from our friends, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.” “The feet” may be a twin screw steamship, but the sight is none the less beautiful. But besides the big foreign services there are a very large number of contracts for conveying mails in British waters. Indeed, to examine the list is to understand in the fullest meaning the term British Isles. When we use the term we think of Great Britain and Ireland, and we perhaps concede the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight to the group. But there are also the Scilly Islands, the Channel Islands, the Western Isles of Scotland including Skye and the Hebrides, the Arran Islands in Ireland, and the Orkney and Shetland Islands off the coast of Scotland. Chief in the Home Packet Service is perhaps the mail service between Holyhead and Kingstown. In the old days Milford and Holyhead were both stations for the Irish mails, but Holyhead has always held the premier position, and now Fishguard has supplanted Milford. Here is a copy of an old advertisement published in 1810 in a Dublin newspaper. It will show how the service was performed in the days before steam navigation:—