Practical joking affected every class. One of the old borough members of Parliament--Francis Fane, who began his long Parliamentary career in 1790--was a practical joker of the most desolating kind. Travelling by coach to London along the Exeter Road on one occasion, he saw, from his seat inside, the coat-tails of one of the outside passengers--a barber, of Dorchester--hanging down. This gave him the pleasing notion of cutting open the pocket and extracting its contents, which happened to be a bulky parcel of banknotes the unfortunate shaver had had given in his charge. The extraordinary cruelty of the practical jokers who made existence a burden to their victims a hundred years ago promised Fane to gloat over the barber’s terror when he found the notes gone, and only to restore them when his enjoyment could be carried no farther. As some amends, he entertained his victim at the White Horse Cellar on the eve of the barber’s return to Dorchester; but his practical joking was not yet complete, for, taking excellent care that his victim should be fully charged with liquor, he hustled him into the night coach for quite another Dorchester--Dorchester, Oxfordshire--where he was duly set down the following morning. APPENDIX Some detailed notice of the Palmer family will have interest here. Mischance long ago destroyed many genealogical documents relating to John Palmer’s ancestors, but family tradition still points to the “John Palmere” who, in 1384, represented Bath in Parliament, as a distinguished forbear. Of ancient and honourable origin, the matrimonial alliances of the Palmers are found among the old county families of Somerset and Wilts. The postal reformer’s mother was one of the Longs, to this day seated in the latter county. She and her husband, John Palmer the elder, lie at Weston, two miles from Bath, and in the village church their memorial tablets may yet be seen. A tradition tells how the reformer himself might have become a Long, had he desired. His kinsman, Walter Long, who died unmarried at the age of ninety-five, proposed to make him heir to extensive estates in Wilts, on condition that he assumed the name; but, with the pardonable arrogance of one who owned an ancient and honourable ancestry, Palmer declined, and satisfied his pride even though he relinquished a rent-roll.