'street orderly bins' which stand at no great distance from the pillar letter-boxes in the city of London. St Martin's-le-Grand is, of course, the great central depot for the letters of London, although it is doubtful whether more letters are not actually posted at the well-known branch-office in Lombard Street. Around this spot the bankers and merchants of the metropolis 'most do congregate,' and of necessity the quantity of matter 'mailed' nightly is very large. So is it at Charing Cross, another of the great posting centres of the metropolis. Visitors to London are perhaps most familiar with the scene which is to be witnessed any evening between half-past five and six o'clock at St Martin's. Here the post-office gapes more widely at its customers, the public, than anywhere else we know of; and here it is prepared to swallow any kind of matter, from the tiniest, flimsiest document, written on 'India post,' to the stock-in-trade of a bookseller from 'the Row' adjoining, or the latest edition of an evening newspaper from neighbouring Fleet Street. Look at the numerous apertures as they gape and yawn in front of you. There is one labelled 'Newspapers,' about as big as a street-door, into which a whole edition of an evening paper might be thrown, without disturbing the calm serenity of the official inside whose duty it is to clear the throat of the monster. 'Letters,' inland, foreign, and colonial, town and country, large and small, thick and thin, may be posted with ease at as many different openings; while the 'stout card' and the thin card, the circular, the book packet, and the sample parcel, each has its appointed mode of descent into the cavernous depths below. What a struggle is there as the hour of six approaches! Burly office-porters jostle delicate shop-girls in their efforts to reach the letter-box; tiny office-boys strain and struggle beneath a load which might more appropriately have been conveyed to the post in a cart or wagon; and hapless youths who have started late, and who have been leap-frogging by the way, are fain to shy their bags or baskets of letters at the nearest opening, and take their chance. Bang goes the clock overhead, and in an instant the box closes with a crash, which must, one would think, have guillotined many a hapless letter thrown in on the stroke of the hour. Eagerness gives way to disappointment in the faces of those who are in the act of ascending the steps 'as the clock was striking the hour,' for the man in the red coat, whose heart is steeled against all importunities, has pronounced the words 'Too late,' and already the officials at the 'window' are busy exacting the fee of procrastination.[2] No sooner has one description of posting finished than another begins. Half an hour prior to the closing of the box at St Martin's-le-Grand, the boxes all over London have closed, and the mail-carts--designed rather for speed than for elegance--are rattling into the yard behind, from the various