This is much more consideration than was generally shown in later years. I was once driving a mail when I had a Yankee gentleman for one of the outside passengers, who was disposed to give trouble in this way, and after being nearly left behind once or twice, he told me that I was bound to give him five minutes at every change of horses. I told him I would not give him two if I could help it, and would leave him behind as soon as look at him. I guess he was smarter in his movements for the rest of the journey. The following instructions, issued to the guards in the same year, seem to point to their having delivered single letters as they passed through the villages, but I certainly never saw such a thing done in later years. In all the towns there were probably post-offices, though such things were then few and far between, not as they are now, in every village. "You are not to stop at any place to leave letters, etc., but to blow your horn to give the people notice that you have got letters for them; therefore, if they do not choose to come out to receive them, don't you get down from your dickey, but take them on, and bring them back with you on your next journey. You are ordered by your instructions to blow your horn when you pass through a town or village. Be careful to perform this duty, or I shall be obliged to punish you." In the months of January and February, 1795, the whole country was visited by most serious storms and floods. It is described in the post-office minutes as "dreadful;" great holes were made in the roads, and many accidents happened through both coachman and guard being chucked from their boxes, and frequently coaches arrived having lost the guard from that cause. Many bridges were washed away all over the country, of which three alone were between Doncaster and Ferrybridge. The mail coach between Edinburgh and Newcastle took a day longer than usual to do the journey. Nearly all the coaches that attempted to perform their journeys had to take circuitous routes on account of floods. Bridges were washed away, roads rendered impassable by great holes in them, and, in Scotland and the north of England, blocked by snow. In the south, a fast thaw set in, which suddenly changed to intense cold, leaving roads simply sheets of ice. Through the combined exertions of the postmasters, a large number of whom were also mail contractors, many of the roads were cleared sufficiently to admit of the coaches running, but it was months before the mails began to arrive with punctuality, and many mail coach routes had to be altered on account of the roads and bridges not being repaired. This was owing, in most instances, to the road commissioners and local authorities failing to come to settlement in supplying the money for the work to be done, and in many instances the Postmaster-General was compelled to indict them for neglecting to put the road in good repair. The guards suffered very much from the intense cold and