The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

By Command] Traditions of hard work and long hours linger still in the Post-office, though nowadays the periods of duty are generally reduced to moderate limits. Some idea of the service required to be rendered formerly by Post-office servants may be gathered from the following order, dating about 1780 or 1790. It refers to the Secretary to the Post-office in Dublin, but we ought perhaps to put a very free interpretation upon it:--"The duty of the Secretary is to carry on the general correspondence, and, under the direction of the Postmaster-General, to superintend the whole business of the office; to attend the Board, and give directions for carrying into execution the orders of the Postmaster-General. His attendance is constant, and at all hours by day and by night--generally from 7 until 10, from 12 until 5, and from 9 until 11 o'clock each day." The postmasters of the United Kingdom are a very large class, numbering many thousands, and comprising every variety of individual from the honest country shopkeeper to the highly intelligent men who are placed in charge of the offices in our principal towns. The former have enough to do in mastering the various codes of rules under which the many branches of business are carried on; while the latter, in exercising discipline over their forces, carrying out changes of administration, and endeavouring to meet the wishes of a public ever wakeful to their interests and privileges, are something in their way like petty sovereigns, of whom it might not inaptly be said, "Uneasy is the head that wears a crown," though the material emblem itself be wanting.