money through the good fortune and favour of the king. It is well that all this should be borne in mind, for Burlamachi's name will come up hereafter. The public do not realise how effective, as a trap, the Post Office is, until they find themselves in the position of having written and posted a letter which, upon cooler reflection, they would fain withhold from the eyes of the person addressed. Cases of this kind occasionally happen in our own day, when proof is given of the irrevocability of the act of dropping a letter into the letter-box. Writers in such cases can then do nothing,--they are left to settle the business with their correspondents as best they may,--and no difficulty or trouble, as a rule, results to the officers of the Post Office. In the earliest days of the post the trap existed, as is shown by the following account of an attempt to recover a letter, after it had been committed to the care of Witherings' officers, in the year 1639. The incident shows that in these days, as well as in ours, men could write letters in haste and repent at leisure. The account comes to us in a declaration by Laurence Kirkham, an assistant in one of the offices appointed in London for the taking in letters for the post. It states that "upon Tuesday the 4th June came William Davies to my master's shop, my mistress and I being there present, to take in letters for Mr. Witherings, His Majesty's Postmaster both for the Northern road and West, etc., for conveyance of letters both by sea and land. Davies, coming as above, demanded a letter again which he said was his own, and that he delivered it to me that same day to go by post. I, not remembering any such thing, and he being a stranger to me, I told him that it was more than I could answer or dared do, to deliver any man's letter again, being once in my hands, especially not knowing it to be his letter; but, for quietness' sake, he being so outrageous for his letter, I told him that if he would stay until the box were opened wherein his letter was, if I found any such letter with such a superscription as he expressed his to have, I would deliver it to him, provided that he carried it not away nor break it open; but he might add something outside, or stick a note in it, if I saw it were no hurt; or rather, if he would write another letter after it, I would give him the portage of it. But this would not satisfy him; he swore I should not keep his letter from him, but he would have it; and thrust his hand into a heap of letters which lay before him in the shop, he well knowing that his letter was not there, and took what he could get of letters and packets, and put in his pocket--some scattering in the street and some in the shop, a multitude of people being gathered together. What he took and what he lost is uncertain, as also what damage my master and others may receive thereby, there being letters to the nobility and many others to the army in the North, and divers to other countries. My mistress,