Simply to avoid payment of the registration fee—whose present amount can hardly be found burdensome—people will hide money or other valuables in some covering material that is inexpensive, or that may be useful to the recipient, such as butter, puddings, etc., which are sent off by the yet cheaper parcel post. One of the most flagrant cases of deception was that of a lady living in Siam, who dispatched to the old country several packages said to contain stationery and walking-sticks, and valued at £7, 10s. 0d. Suspicion was aroused—perhaps by the odd combination of treasures—and the parcels were opened, when the “stationery and walking-sticks” of modest value resolved themselves into a superb collection of diamonds and other jewels worth about £25,000. The Post Office is often reproached for slowness or unwillingness to adopt new ways; and, as a rule, the accusations are accompanied by brilliant and highly original witticisms, in which figure the contemptuous words “red tape.” For the apparent lack of official zeal, the reproaching public itself is often to blame. Its passion—dating from long past times, yet far from moribund—for defrauding the department which, on the whole, serves it so well, yet with so few thanks and so many scoldings, is one chief bar to possible reforms. When, for example, the book-post was established in 1846,[219] all sorts of things which had no right to be where they were found used to be hidden between the pages. In one instance, a watch was concealed in an old volume, within whose middle leaves a deep hole had been excavated which was artfully covered over by the outside binding and by several pages at the beginning and end of the book. To the casual observer it therefore presented an innocent appearance, but fell victim to post-official, lynx-eyed investigation. “With every desire to give the public all possible facilities,” wrote my father in his diary, “we were often debarred from so doing by the tricks and evasions which too frequently followed any relaxation of our rules.” Even the great Macaulay transgressed strict postal regulations, being in the habit, as his nephew tells us in one of the most delightful biographies ever written, of sending him, when a school-boy, letters fastened with sealing-wax, the seal hiding the welcome golden “tip.” As the use of seals has almost entirely died out, and sealed missives, even in Macaulay's time, were coming to be looked at with suspicion—as probably containing something worth investigation—by those through whose hands they pass, the boy was fortunate in that his uncle's letters reached him safely.