A very busy man himself, my father was naturally full of admiration for Gladstone's marvellous capacity for work and for attending to a number of different things at once. One day, when the Secretary to the Post Office went to Downing Street to transact some departmental business with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he found the latter engaged with his private secretaries, every one of whom was hard at work, a sculptor being meanwhile employed upon a bust for which the great man was too much occupied to give regular sittings. Every now and then during my father's interview, Mrs Gladstone, almost, if not quite, as hard-working as her husband, came in and out, each time on some errand of importance, and all the while letters and messengers and other people were arriving or departing. Yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed able to keep that wonderful brain of his as clear as if his attention had been wholly concentrated on the business about which his postal visitor had come, and this was soon discussed and settled in Gladstone's own clear and concise manner, notwithstanding the should-have-been-bewildering surroundings, which would have driven my father all but distracted. A characteristic, everyday scene of that strenuous life. On Rowland Hill's retirement, he received many letters of sympathy and of grateful recognition of his services from old friends and former colleagues, most of them being men of distinguished career. They form a valuable collection of autographs, which would have been far larger had not many of his early acquaintances, those especially who worked heartily and well during the late 'thirties to help forward the reform, passed over already to the majority. One letter was from Lord Monteagle, who, as Mr Spring Rice, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Melbourne Administration, had proposed Penny Postage in the Budget of 1839.