"On arriving at a house in the middle of a street, I observed a brass number, 95, on the door, the houses on each side being numbered respectively 14 and 16. A woman came to the door, when I requested to be informed why 95 should appear between 14 and 16; she said it was the number of a house she formerly lived at in another street, and it (meaning the brass plate) being a very good one, she thought it would do for her present residence as well as any other." _Unfounded Complaints._ Reference was made to serious charges brought against the Post Office without sufficient examination of antecedent facts; thus it was shown to a newspaper publisher, who complained of repeated losses, that it was his own clerk who was the thief. In another case, a more general complaint on the same subject led to the discovery, near the chief office, of a thriving mart, illicitly supplied by private messengers employed to convey newspapers to the post. _Early History of the Post Office._ In an interesting Report from Mr. Scudamore, there is a remarkable passage which shows that general views in accordance with those on which my reforms were founded were incidentally expressed, about a century and a half before, by the Postmasters-General of the day, Sir R. Cotton and Sir F. Frankland. It is as follows:-- "We have, indeed, found by experience, that where we have made the correspondence more easie and cheape, the number of letters has been thereby much increased, and therefore do believe such a settlement may be attended with a like effect in those parts [viz., a particular district]." I cite also from Mr. Scudamore's Report the following curious passage:-- "The packets in those times, when war raged for so many years, and when every sea was covered with French privateers, gave our Postmasters-General very great and constant anxiety. Their orders to the captains of such vessels are urgent, that they shall run while they can, fight when they can no longer run, and throw the mails overboard when fighting will no longer avail.... [There is] a piteous petition from James Vickers, captain of the Grace Dogger, who, as he lay in Dublin Bay waiting until the tide would take him over the bar, was seized by a French privateer, the captain of which stripped the Grace Dogger of her rigging, sails, spars, and yards, and of all the furniture 'wherewith she had been provided for the due accommodation of passengers, leaving not so much as a spoone or a nail-hooke to hang anything on,' and finally ransomed her to the aforesaid James Vickers for fifty guineas, which sum, with the cost of the other losses, our Postmaster-General had to pay." _Improvement in Accounts._