[144] “Life,” i. 471. [145] _Ibid._, i. 468. [146] The registration fee is one of the postal charges which have become smaller since that time, to the great benefit of the public. It is pleasant to know that the threatened plan of highly-feed compulsory registration was never carried into effect. [147] “Gentle Tom Hood,” as the wittiest of modern poets has been called, was a friend of old standing. Though little read to-day, some of his more serious poems are of rare beauty, and his _Haunted House_ is a marvel of what Ruskin used to call “word-painting.” His letters to children were as delightful as those of the better-known “Lewis Carroll.” Hood was very deaf, and this infirmity inclined him, when among strangers or in uncongenial society, to taciturnity. Guests who had never met him, and who came expecting to hear a jovial fellow set the table in a roar, were surprised to see a quiet-mannered man in evidently poor health, striving, by help of an ear-trumpet, to catch other people's conversation. But, at any rate, it was _not_ in our house that the hostess, piqued at the chilly silence pervading that end of her table which should have been most mirthful, sent her little daughter down the whole length of it to beg the bored wit to “wake up and be funny!” Hood had many cares and sorrows, including the constant struggle with small means and ill-health; and it is pleasant to remember that when the final breakdown came, Sir Robert Peel—concealing under a cloak of kindly tactfulness, so kindly that the over-sensitive beneficiary could not feel hurt—bestowed on the dying man some sorely-needed monetary assistance. [148] This and the previous paragraph are contributed by Mr Pearson Hill, who was always, and deservedly, entirely in our father's confidence. [149] “Life,” i. 436. The only time, later, when there seemed a chance of such increase was during the Crimean War, “when,” said my father in his diary, “being called upon to make a confidential report, I showed that, though some immediate increase of revenue might be expected from raising the rate to twopence, the benefit would be more than counterbalanced by the check to correspondence; and upon this the project was abandoned.” [150] It was during Rowland Hill's connection with the Railway Company that a riddle appeared in a certain newspaper which was copied into other papers, and was therefore not slow in reaching our family circle. It was worded much as follows: “When is Mr Rowland Hill like the rising sun?—When he tips the little Hills with gold.” We never knew who originated this delightful _jeu d'esprit_, but our father was much amused with it, and we children had the best possible reason for being grateful to its author. The riddle cropped up afresh in Lord Fitzmaurice's “Life of Lord Granville” (i. 174); but the Duke of Argyll, then Postmaster-General, is therein made the generous donor. CHAPTER VI THE STAMPS