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

“'No.' “The hope of the post office shut down the slit with a snap; and the queue settled down to more patience and more beating time.” The German accepts this as a part of his divinely organised scheme of things; it is the Englishman who meditates murder. Many of us are familiar with the French Post Office. In many ways the French have been in advance of our own methods. It is only since 1897 that we have had in this country a complete system of rural posts, but as early as 1830 a law was passed in France, that in every village where there was no post office, there should at least be a delivery of letters every two days. In 1877 the Chief of the French Post Office could say with justice that the rural delivery in France was the most perfect in the world. The real hero of the French Postal Service, it has been said, is the rural postman. From year's end to year's end he trudges on, without a rest even on the greatest holidays. In France nothing less than a revolution stops the postman's rounds, and even then he has often been seen, bag in hand, smiling on the summits of barricades with the bullets whistling around him.