The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

Similar anxiety to be first in possession of commercial or political news conveyed through the newspapers was no doubt common to all business centres at the period referred to; though in our own age such information is largely anticipated and discounted by the telegraph, and in this respect the circumstances have changed. Senex, in 'Glasgow Past and Present,' humorously describes the scene enacted at the Tontine Coffee Rooms, in Glasgow, during the French War, at the close of last century, on the arrival of the mail. He says:--"Immediately on receiving the bag of papers from the Post-office, the waiter locked himself up in the bar, and after he had sorted the different papers and had made them up in a heap, he unlocked the door, and making a sudden rush into the middle of the room, he tossed up the whole lot of newspapers as high as the ceiling. Now came the grand rush and scramble of the subscribers, every one darting forward to lay hold of a falling newspaper. Sometimes a lucky fellow got hold of five or six newspapers, and ran off with them to a corner, in order to select his favourite paper; but he was always hotly pursued by some half-dozen of the disappointed scramblers, who, without ceremony, pulled from his hands the first paper they could lay hold of, regardless of its being torn in the contest. On these occasions I have often seen a heap of gentlemen sprawling on the floor of the room, and riding upon one another's backs like a parcel of boys. It happened, however, unfortunately, that a gentleman in one of these scrambles got two of his teeth knocked out of his head, and this ultimately brought about a change in the manner of delivering the newspapers."