“Can’t do that,” replied the smiling postman. “We have brought you a ’special delivery’ as it is, and I must go back for my ordinary rounds.” “Well, they can’t come in here,” I repeated in the cook’s words, as the wind howled down the street and stray flakes of snow fell. “Let us stand them in the street,” brilliantly suggested the postman. This was an inspiration, and accordingly one hundred and ninety-six parcels were packed up against the side of a London house. They stood four or five feet high. Having told the cook to remain at the front door and see that nothing happened to them, I returned to my half-cold egg, but I had not even finished it before there were more altercations at the door. The noise continuing, I again left the breakfast-table (8.45 a.m.) to see what it meant. Another van. This time a Carter Paterson. “Have _you_ any parcels?” I asked in trepidation. “Yes, mum, seventy-eight; nearly a van-load of sacks and crates and other huge things.” Into the street they also had to go, but before the men were finished unpacking other carts were arriving, and depositing sixteen, twenty-seven, thirty-six packages upon the pavement. By ten o’clock the house and the neighbours’ houses were barricaded with parcels. Never, probably, was such a sight seen in a London street. Five vans’ loads disgorged at one time. Messina was buried in ruins, I was buried in parcels. After eighteen days I was being disinterred from bundles and packages in London. It all came about in this wise. The letter I sent to six important London papers, expecting, perhaps, that one of them might kindly print it, appeared in all of them. The evening Press reprinted it. It was copied into the large provincial papers the next day. That letter started a veritable snow-ball scheme. It was a Tuesday. I had a luncheon engagement. On my return about four in the afternoon my parlourmaid met me with an agonised face, and exclaimed: “We _have_ had a time since you went out, m’m!” “Why?” I asked, surprised. “By twelve o’clock that front door-bell began to ring,” she said, “and it has never ceased. Ladies in motors, people in carriages, gentlemen in hansoms, babies in perambulators—and they have all left parcels.” “Parcels!” I exclaimed in horror. “Yes, m’m, parcels. The cloak-room is stacked from floor to ceiling.” [Illustration: THE WRITER BURIED IN PARCELS FOR MESSINA _By Harry Furniss_] This rather took my breath away, and I wondered how on earth I should ever get that number of things to Sicily. No chance to return to the breakfast-table. There was no time to finish that egg as wildly I rushed to the telephone, begging one or two intimate friends to come and help at once, while a servant went off to neighbours to ask for immediate assistance. Between signing papers for quickly-arriving packages and struggling to get helpers, a policeman appeared. “Very sorry, mum, but, you know, you are obstructing the roadway,” he said.