[94] Mr. Hill related some of these in his pamphlet. Thus, at page 91, we read:--"Some years ago when it was the practice to write the name of a Member of Parliament for the purpose of franking a newspaper, a friend of mine, previous to starting on a tour into Scotland, arranged with his family a plan of informing them of his progress and state of health, without putting them to the expense of postage. It was managed thus: he carried with him a number of old newspapers, one of which he put into the post daily. The postmark, with the date, showed his progress; and the state of his health was evinced by the selection of the name, from a list previously agreed upon, with which the newspaper was franked. 'Sir Francis Burdett,' I recollect, denoted vigorous health." Better known is the anecdote of a postal adventure of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, already adverted to at the commencement of the present chapter. The story is told originally, in Mr. Hill's pamphlet also:--Once, on the poet's visits to the Lake district, he halted at the door of a wayside inn at the moment when the rural postman was delivering a letter to the barmaid of the place. Upon receiving it she turned it over and over in her hand and then asked the postage of it. The postman demanded a shilling. Sighing deeply, however, the girl handed the letter back, saying she was too poor to pay the required sum. The poet at once offered to pay the postage, and in spite of some resistance on the part of the girl, which he deemed quite natural, did so. The messenger had scarcely left the place, when the young barmaid confessed that she had learnt all she was likely to learn from the letter; that she had only been practising a pre-conceived trick: she and her brother having agreed that a few hieroglyphics on the back of the letter should tell her all she wanted to know, whilst the letter would contain no writing. "We are so poor," she added, "that we have invented this manner of corresponding and franking our letters." [95] Select Committee on Postage, 1843. [96] _Ibid._ [97] October, 1859, Art 9. See also Raikes' _Diary_, vol. iii.