"There, that's a northern division boy who has just backed against you, ma'am." The boy referred to turned, apologised, and gathering the letters for the northern division from the sorter at their elbow, moved on to gather more from others. "The division letters," continued Bright, "are then conveyed to other sorters, who subdivide them into roads, and then the final sorting takes place for the various towns. We have a staff of about a thousand sorters, assistant sorters, and boy-sorters in this (Inland) office alone, who have been, or are being, carefully trained for the work. Some are smart, and some of course are slow. They are tested occasionally. When a sorter is tested he is given a pack of five hundred cards--dummies--to represent letters. A good man will sort these in thirteen or fifteen minutes. There are always sure to be a few mis-sorts, even in _our_ well-regulated family--that is, letters sorted to the wrong sections or divisions. Forty mis-sorts in the five hundred is considered very bad work." "But what if a sorter does not happen to know the division to which any particular letter belongs?" asked Miss Lillycrop. "He ought to know," replied her guide, "because all the sorters have to undergo a strict examination once a year as to their knowledge of towns and villages throughout England." "Indeed! but," persisted Miss Lillycrop, "what does he do with a letter if he chances to forget?" "Why, he must get other sorters to help him." "And what happens if he finds a letter so badly addressed that he cannot read it?" "Sends it to the blind division; we shall come to that presently," said Mr Bright. "Meanwhile we shall visit the hospital I need scarcely explain to you that the hospital is the place to which wounded letters and packages are taken to be healed. Here it is." The party now stood beside a table, at which several clerks--we might almost say surgeons--were at work, busy with sealing-wax and string. The patients were a wondrous lot, and told eloquently of human carelessness. Here were found letters containing articles that no envelope of mere paper could be expected to hold--such as bunches of heavy keys, articles of jewellery, etcetera, which had already more than half escaped from their covers. There were also frail cardboard boxes, so squeezed and burst that their contents were protruding, and parcels containing worsted and articles of wearing apparel, which had been so carelessly put up as to have come undone in the mail-bags. All these things were being re-tied, re-folded, patched up here and there with sealing-wax, or put into new covers, by the postal surgeons, and done with as much care, too, as though the damage had been caused by the Post-Office rather than by carelessness in the public.