By all who would know the true love of stamps it must needs be understood how postal matters were before the birth of the Penny Black. Else we shall not fitly appreciate all the benefices that the "label with the glutinous wash" has brought to our present civilisation. Without this comparison of the old order with the new, we should be in peril of passing over the true significance of the postage-stamp in the surfeit of blessings it confers upon the world to-day. Postage to-day is as fecund of bounties as a fruitful garden, yet do we accept all as our rightful heritage, without giving much consideration to the little postage-stamp which was the seed which, planted in every civilised country of the earth, has yielded blessings in abundance. So in our first chat, we would open up the book in which is told the history of things that are written from one to another. The first letter of which we have any particular knowledge was that by which David achieved his evil purpose of sending Uriah the Hittite to the forefront of the battle, that he might be smitten and die. The unfortunate Uriah was himself the messenger, bearing the fatal letter to Joab with his own hand. The brazen-faced Jezebel forged her royal husband's name to letters, so our first meeting with letters in scriptural history shows that they could be used to evil as well as to good purpose. As the Scythians made contracts one with another by mingling the warm blood of their bodies in a cup and drinking thereof, so the Persians used living letters in their early correspondence. Herodotus tells us how they shaved the heads of their messengers and impressed or branded the "writing" upon their scalps. Then they were shut up until the hair had grown again and concealed the message, when the runners were sent off upon their divers journeys. A messenger on reaching his destination was again shaved and the epistle was made plain to the eyes of the beholder. This was a primitive method, one of many which had vogue amongst the ancients. Under Darius I. the Persians had a service of Government couriers, for whom were provided horses ready saddled at specified distances on their route, so that the Government could send and receive communications with the provinces. "Nothing in the world is borne so swiftly as messages by the Persian couriers," says Herodotus.