If we turn to consider the addresses, how amusing we find some in their ambiguity; how blundering and stupid a few more! Some say too little, others too much; some give the phonetic system with _malice prepense_, others because it is nature's own rendering and they have never known school! Sometimes (and the practice is growing) the envelope is covered with long advertisements, for the benefit and information of the Post-Office officials, we presume, in which case it is difficult to arrive at the proper address of the letter at the first or even second glance. Some give the address of the _sender_ in prominent printed characters, and it is surely not a matter of wonder when the letter, as not unfrequently, happens, finds its way back to the sender. In all cases of this kind, time is of course lost to the Post-Office, and the work of examination is necessarily deliberate, hesitating, and slow. At one point, the quota of letters from the sister-isle is received, and it is then perhaps that the sorter's patience is put to the severest test. The addresses of the letters of the poorer Irish are generally so involved--always being sent to the care of one or two individuals--that they usually present the appearance of a little wilderness of words. As a specimen of the kind of letter referred to, we give our readers a copy of one which actually passed through the Post-Office some time ago, assuring them that though the following is rather an _ultra_ specimen, this kind of minute but indefinite address is by no means uncommon among the class referred to:-- +----------------------------------------------+ | | | To my sister Bridget, or else to | | | | my brother Tim Burke, in care | | | | of the Praste, who lives in the parish | | | | of Balcumbury in Cork, or if not to | | | | _some dacent neighbour in Ireland_. | | | +----------------------------------------------+ The English poor oftener, as we have already seen, show their unbounded confidence in the sagacity of the officers of the Post-Office by leaving out some essential part of the address of a letter, but very seldom writing too much. We once saw a letter addressed as follows:--"Mary H----, a tall woman with two children," and giving the name of a large town in the West of England.