In a large provincial town a person applied in haste at the post office, stating that on his way thither he seemed to have dropped an order which he was bringing for payment; at the same time giving in his name, and begging that no order might be paid to that name until his return, as he would go back to his house to examine whether he might perchance have left it there. Some time after his departure, however, a second person came to the window, saying that Mr. ---- had recovered the order, having in fact left it at home, and had sent him with it to obtain payment, he himself being unexpectedly detained. The clerk, satisfied with this plausible statement, fitting in so well with antecedent circumstances, delivered the money accordingly, but was startled a few minutes later by the reappearance of the first claimant, with the declaration that, as he had not been able to find the order at home, it must of course have been lost, and a request that nothing might be done until a new order was obtained. Upon the clerk's reporting what had meanwhile occurred, and mentioning the new rule, the applicant, after some remarks not particularly flattering to postal sagacity, announced his intention to appeal in the highest quarter. The decision there made was that in so extraordinary a case the strict rule should not be fully maintained, but that the department must, nevertheless, be secured from loss. This was thrown in equal shares on the two parties immediately concerned, each having shown negligence, the one in losing the order, the other in paying it against injunction. _Esquires in Low Life._ An angry letter was received at the General Office relative to alleged misconduct in an officer at the Charing Cross office, who had refused to pay a money order, because of irregularity in the signature of the payee. The complainant reported that the ground of objection was that when he gave his signature he appended the term Esq., adding, "The silly fellow does not know that in a certain rank of life every one signs himself Esq." _Complaints._ It is curious, and would at first sight seem inexplicable, that acceleration of the mails, though effected solely for the public benefit, often too at great cost, and always with much trouble, led in some instances to angry complaint. Perhaps the most whimsical instance of this was that of a lady in a northern town, at which the night mail from London had previously arrived somewhat too late for the last delivery of the day, so that the letters could not be distributed until the following morning, whereas by this acceleration they were delivered the same evening. The allegation was that, whereas complainant used always to get her letters early in the morning, she never received them now till late at night. _Joseph Ady._