The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

"Inquiry having been made respecting a letter sent to a person residing at Kirkcudbright, it appeared that it had been duly delivered, but that the addressee having left the letter on a table during the night, it had been devoured by rats." Another case of the depredation of rats upon letters is as follows:-- Certain letters which ought to have reached a bookseller in a country town not having been received, it was concluded, after inquiry, that they had been duly delivered, but had subsequently been withdrawn from under the street door, which was furnished with a slit to receive letters, but without a box to retain them. During subsequent alterations in the shop, however, when it was necessary to remove the flooring under the window, the discovery was made of thirty-one letters, six post-cards, and three newspapers which had been carried thither by rats! The corners of the letters, &c., bearing the stamps, were nibbled away, leaving no doubt that the gum upon the labels was the inducement to the theft. Several of the letters contained cheques and money-orders. But rats are old enemies to letters, as is known in the Post-office; for in the olden times, when sailing-ships were in use as mail-packets, sad complaints were made of the havoc caused by "ratts" to the mails conveyed in these ships. Nor are rats the only dumb creatures which have shown a "literary" turn, in getting possession of post-letters. Some years ago a postman was going his rounds delivering letters in Kelvedon, in Essex, carrying a registered letter in his hand ready to deliver it at the next house, when a tame raven--a worthy compeer, if not a contemporary, of the Jackdaw of Rheims--suddenly darted down, snatched it from his grasp, and flew off with it. The bewildered postman could only watch the bird while it made a circuit over the town, which it did before alighting; and so soon as it got to a suitable place, it set to work to analyse the composition of the missive by tearing the letter to pieces. The fragments were shortly afterwards collected and put together, when it was found that part of them were the remains of a cheque for L30, which was afterwards renewed when the singular affair was made known.