The motor coaches are met at the more important cross roads by smaller motors and carts, with which they exchange mails. There is in this way a network of van services stretching over the whole country. The silent highway is stirred into a sudden activity when the Post Office night motor van appears. Hundreds of haycarts make their way to London during the night-time along some of the Essex roads. The drivers of these carts work very long hours and often fall asleep. The horses sometimes stop and go to sleep also. These carts standing in the centre of the highway are often a source of danger to the motor mail vans, and we can imagine the feelings of a driver of one of the carts when awakened from a long sleep by the hoot of the motor, and perhaps realising that he is miles farther from his destination than he should be. Hop-pickers in Kent frequently sleep at night with their heads under a hedge and their feet stretching into the roadway. Accidents have only been avoided through the alertness of the mail van drivers. A great difference between driving a horse mail coach and a motor vehicle is that, in the case of the former, the horses can be trusted to find their own way if the driver dozed off for a moment. With motors, however, a similar lapse on the driver's part would spell disaster. An old mail cart driver whom I once interviewed told me this story. “I was driving the mail one night from Chesham to Taplow, and arriving at Beaconsfield, which is nearly half way, I got down from my seat and went into the inn, saying to the Post Office official who was in attendance that he could take out the bag himself from the back of the car. He did so, and then shut down the lid of the mail box with a bang. This was sufficient notice to the horse that all was ready to start, and off he trotted without his driver, in the darkness of the night. Ten and a half miles was the distance he had to travel, and the horse knew his business as well as the required pace, and he trotted into Taplow station within a minute of his scheduled time.” I asked the man if he got into trouble for the apparent neglect of his Majesty's mails. His face brightened up as the face of every official does when he recollects the sins he has committed which have not been found out. “You see, sir, a porter was waiting for me at the station, and he wondered, but determined not to give the show away. He unloaded the mails as if nothing extraordinary was happening. Then he went in search of me. I walked the distance, full of terrible thoughts and gloomy fears.” And he added, “I wonder if these much-talked-of motor cars are likely to be of such service to the Post Office as my good old horse.”