The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

"The newspaper window, ever yawning for more, is presently surrounded and besieged by an array of boys of all ages and costumes, together with children of a larger growth, who are all alike pushing, heaving, and surging in one great mass. The window, with tremendous gape, is assaulted with showers of papers, which fly thicker and faster than the driven snow. Now it is, that small boys of eleven and twelve years of age, panting Sinbad-like under the weight of huge bundles of newspapers, manage somehow to dart about and make rapid sorties into other ranks of boys, utterly disregarding the cries of the official policemen, who vainly endeavour to reduce the tumult into something like post-office order. If the lads cannot quietly and easily disembogue, they will whizz their missiles of intelligence over other people's heads, now and then sweeping off hats and caps with the force of shot. The gathering every moment increases in number, and intensifies in purpose; arms, legs, sacks, baskets, heads, bundles, and woollen comforters--for who ever saw a veritable newspaper boy without that appendage?--seem to be getting into a state of confusion and disagreeable communism, and yet 'the cry is still, they come.' Heaps of papers of widely opposed political views are thrown in together--no longer placed carefully in the openings; they are now sent in in sackfuls and basketfuls, while over the heads of the surging crowd were flying back the empty sacks, thrown out of the office by the porters inside.