"I was at Weymouth when I was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and busy with you about the reduction [of postage], and used, with my children, to frequent a shell-shop and gossip with the shopkeeper--a man of some intelligence in his way. I was at Weymouth again this summer, and having gone to my shell friend, after a little talk, 'Oh, Sir!' he said, 'I must tell you that the penny postage that you were busy about when you were here last has been a great benefit to me in my way, which you did not, I dare say, expect, and I am sure I did not. I now send my shells all over the country.'" The following is a curious instance of a real advantage figuring as the reverse. While the year's improvement did not equal my expectation, a return called for by Parliament was so given as to make it appear less than it really was, the progress in gross revenue being in effect understated by about £100,000. The following is the explanation of this anomaly:--By the system of prepayment the number of rejected letters had been so diminished that the deduction made on their account from the gross postage had been reduced by that sum, a fact suppressed in the return.[53] I pointed out the error to the Accountant-General, who at once admitted it, but explained that a corrective entry which he had made in the return had been removed thence by order. BOOK POST. The following entries relate to the Book Post:-- "_January 28th._--Went to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to endeavour to remove his objections to the book post. He is afraid apparently of the railway interest, and dislikes the notion of entering into competition with carriers. I reminded him that we did not propose to avail ourselves of our monopoly [I should have said 'to extend our monopoly to the conveyance of books'], but merely to serve the public better than it is now served; that no other system than that of the Post Office would reach the rural districts; and pointed out the moral and political importance of enlightening those districts, &c., &c. We had a stout battle, but in the end he gave up, suggesting, however, for my consideration, the expediency, in the first instance at least, of restricting each packet to a single volume." This suggestion was adopted. The difficulties being thus removed, the book post was at length established, the necessary warrant appearing in the _Gazette_ of February 11th. At first any writing whatsoever found in a posted book made it subject to letter charge, but this absolute restriction was soon found to be inconvenient, especially to collectors of old books. Professor De Morgan, I remember, found it a little hard that a bar to the use of the book post should arise from the mere fact that a useful volume contained some such inscription as the following:-- "Anne price Her Booke god give her grace therein to Look;"