THE POST OFFICE OF FIFTY YEARS AGO.
women, and domestic servants, the benefits of this access to home become clearly inestimable. Society seems to be awakening to a sense of the hardship of ill-requited labour—of the extreme scantiness of the recompense of the toil of women especially. However grievous the hardship may be, the case was worse when the solitary worker felt her affections crushed—felt as if forsaken under an enforced family silence. Far more important is the opening of the Post Office to hundreds and thousands of these industrious workers than an increase of earnings would be; for the restoration of access to home, which might then be an expensive indulgence, is now a matter of course for all; a benefit enjoyed without hesitation or remorse. Now while they can spare a few pence from the supply of their urgent wants, they can retain their place in affection and self-respect beside the family hearth, and who shall say to how many this privilege has been equivalent to peace of mind—in how many cases to the preservation of innocence and a good name?
Then, again, how many are the sick-rooms of this country, and how many of the active members of society are interested in each sick-room? Among the richer classes, if any member of a family is ill, the rest can come together and await the event. Not so in the wide-spreading working classes. There, whatever may be their anxieties, families must remain asunder. For the most part the absent members were, till lately, obliged to be patient under a weekly bulletin, or if more frequent accounts were indulged in, the expense was a heavy aggravation of the cost of illness, and was indeed in large families out of the question. Look at the difference now! How much more allowable is a daily bulletin now than a weekly one was then; and though the sick are few in comparison with the numbers who have an interest in them, they are numerous enough, particularly if we include the aged and infirm, to deserve consideration for themselves. Who can imagine the importance of the post hour, in these days, to the sick and suffering? Who does not know that to a multitude of these sufferers post time is the brightest season of the day? Indeed, an entirely new alleviation, a most salutary source of cheerfulness, has been let into the sick-room by the new Post Office arrangement. It would be a blessing if only a few sufferers were enriched with a flow of family and friendly correspondence, not only of letters but of drawings, books, music, flowers, seeds,46
