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

SEELEY, SERVICE & CO. LIMITED AUTHOR'S NOTE A great deal has been written about the General Post Office in newspapers and magazines, but the books on the subject are comparatively few. And these volumes are either exhaustive historical treatises, such as Mr. Herbert Joyce's History of the Post Office, or more popularly written descriptions of Post Office life and work of the character of Lewin's His Majesty's Mails or J. W. Heyde's Royal Mail. Mr. Joyce's work, however, carries us no farther than the eve of penny postage, while the other books were written too long ago to be a guide to the Post Office of to-day. It is within the last twenty years that the Department has made the most rapid strides in the extension of its activities, and it is this period especially which is without an historian. What I have attempted to do is to tell the story of the Department, briefly in its early beginnings, more fully in its modern developments, and in such a way as to give the reader the impression that the Post Office is alive, that it is in close touch with the needs of the nation, and is in less danger of being strangled with red-tape methods than at any time of its existence. A book on the Post Office written for the student should contain abundant references to authorities and exhaustive tables of figures and estimates, but in the interest of the general reader I have omitted these aids to reflection. Mark Twain, when he published one of his novels, said he had omitted all descriptions of scenery in the story, but those who liked that sort of thing would find it in the appendix. I have dispensed even with an appendix, and those who really want figures and estimates must be referred to the Postmaster-General's Annual Reports.