Stokers and pokers : $b or, The London and North-Western Railway, the electric telegraph, and the railway clearing-houseHead, Francis Bond, Sir
History
Stokers and pokers : $b or, The London and North-Western Railway, the electric telegraph, and the railway clearing-house
Head, Francis Bond, Sir
London and North-Western Railway; Railway Clearing House (London, England); Telegraph -- Great Britain
Among the manifold arrangements which characterise the interior of
the British hive there is, we believe, no one which offers to an
intelligent observer a more important moral than the respect which is
everywhere paid by us to the correspondence of the nation. Prior to
the introduction of railways our post-office establishment was the
admiration of every foreigner who visited us. But although our light
mail-coaches, high-bred horses, glittering harness, skilful coachmen,
resolute guards, and macadamised roads were undeniably of the very
best description, yet the moral basis on which the whole fabric
rested, or rather the power which gave vitality to its movements,
evidently was a patriotic desire indigenous in the minds of people of
all classes to protect, as their common wealth, the correspondence
of the country; and accordingly it mattered not whether on our
public thoroughfares were to be seen a butcher’s cart, a brewer’s
dray, a bishop’s coach, a nobleman’s landau, the squire’s chariot
or his tenant’s waggon;--it mattered not what quantity of vehicles
were assembled for purposes good, bad, or indifferent, for church,
for race-course, or for theatre;--it mattered not for what party of
pleasure or for what political purpose a crowd or a mob might have
assembled; for at a single blast through a long tin horn people of
all ranks and conditions, however they might be disposed to dispute
on all other subjects, were ready from all quarters to join together
in exclaiming, “MAKE WAY FOR THE MAIL!”
At the magic whistle of the locomotive engine the whole of the
extremely slow, dull, little-bag system we have just referred to
suddenly fell to pieces. Nevertheless, the spirit that had animated
it flew from the road to the rails, and although our penny-postal
arrangements, notwithstanding their rapid growth, are less
conspicuous, there exists throughout the country the same honest
anxiety that our letter-bags should be circulated over the surface
of the United Kingdom with the utmost possible care and despatch. In
order, however, to fulfil this general desire the duties which our
Postmaster-General is now required to perform are most extraordinary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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