There is no branch of the Public Service that comes into such close contact with the people as the Post Office. Its officials are consulted in all kinds of family troubles, they have to deal with curious superstitions and beliefs and to overcome the prejudices ingrained by an hereditary system of caste. The official measure of the successful working of the Department is gauged by the annual statistics, but the real measure of its success may be learned from the attitude of the people themselves. The Indian villager dreads the presence of the Government officer in his neighbourhood, but he makes an exception in the case of Post Office employés. The postman is always a welcome visitor and, if he fails to attend regularly, a complaint is invariably made. It is in the delivery of correspondence throughout the smaller towns and rural tracts in India that the Post Office has to face some of its most difficult problems. Towns in India, with the exception of the Presidency and more important towns, are mere collections of houses, divided into "mohullas" or quarters. Few streets have names, and consequently addresses tend to be vague descriptions which tax all the ingenuity of the delivery agents. Among the poorer classes definite local habitations with names are almost unknown, and the best that a correspondent can do is to give the name of the addressee, his trade and the bazaar that he frequents. Such cases are comparatively simple, as the postman is usually a man with an intimate knowledge of the quarter, and the recipients of letters have no objection to be described by their physical defects, such as "he with the lame leg" or "the squint eye" or "the crooked back"! Real difficulties, however, arise when articles are addressed to members of the peripatetic population consisting of pilgrims, boatmen and other wanderers. There is an enormous boat traffic on the large rivers of Bengal and Burma. The boat is the home of a family, it wanders over thousands of miles of channels carrying commodities, and letters to the owner rarely give anything except a general direction to deliver the article on board a boat carrying wood or rice from some river port to another. The pilgrims who travel from shrine to shrine in the country are also a puzzle to the Post Office, and in sacred places, like Benares, special postmen have to be trained to deliver their letters. The forms of address are seldom very helpful for a speedy distribution and delivery of the mail. The following are characteristic of what a sorter has to deal with any day:-- "With good blessings to the fortunate Babu Kailas Chandra Dey, may the dear boy live long. The letter to go to the Baidiabati post office. The above-named person will get it on reaching Baidiabati, Khoragachi, Goynapara. (Bearing.)"