Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 11, 2025
"Now then, my lads, off with you." The postmen had come into the sorting-room, and were packing their bags and slinging their parcels. "Sharp's the word." Picking up his unopened letter, the postmaster went through the public office, stood on the outer threshold, and looked up and down the street.
Why the dickens should a fellow come three thousand miles to be prodded by postmen?" "The point is well taken," said George. "What did you do?" "I gave him a shove, you know. I've got a frightfully hasty temper, you know. All the Bassington-Bassingtons have got frightfully hasty tempers, don't you know! And then he biffed me in the eye and lugged me off to this beastly place."
I went upon wild-goose chases innumerable; was the victim of every kind of chance hint; gathered fallacious information from garrulous third-class passengers on many railways; confided my case to carters and rural postmen, who played upon my innocence with genial malice; stayed so long at village public-houses without visible motive that I incurred the suspicion of the local constabulary, and on one memorable occasion found myself identified with a long watched-for robber of local hen-roosts.
After all, it was not found necessary to have an office competing with another office, trying to send out pinker postage-stamps or more picturesque postmen.
His eye and nose were impeccable in their sense of form; indeed, he was very English in that matter: People must be just so; things smell properly; and affairs go on in the one right way. He could tolerate neither creatures in ragged clothes, nor children on their hands and knees, nor postmen, because, with their bags, they swelled-up on one side, and carried lanterns on their stomachs.
Thus I had always enough money to keep me going during the week. In addition to verses, I kept turning out a great quantity of prose, fiction, and otherwise, but without much success. The visits of the postmen were the big events of the day at that time. Before I had been in Walpole Street a week I could tell by ear the difference between a rejected manuscript and an ordinary letter.
The London people had for themselves, at the same time, an exuberance of type; we found it in particular a world of costume, often of very odd costume the most intimate notes of which were the postmen in their frock-coats of military red and their black beaver hats; the milkwomen, in hats that often emulated these, in little shawls and strange short, full frocks, revealing enormous boots, with their pails swung from their shoulders on wooden yokes; the inveterate footmen hooked behind the coaches of the rich, frequently in pairs and carrying staves, together with the mounted and belted grooms without the attendance of whom riders, of whichever sex and riders then were much more numerous almost never went forth.
As a whole, it was not over a hundred years old. A hundred years is youth in a church and age in a house. It seems as though man's lodging partook of his ephemeral character, and God's house of his eternity. The postmen called the house Number 50-52; but it was known in the neighborhood as the Gorbeau house. Let us explain whence this appellation was derived.
Dirt and discomfort were all very well when there was plenty of work to do, and we all decided that every officer should have been in the ranks, but despatch-riding had lost its savour. We had become postmen. Thoughts of the days when we had dashed round picking-up brigades, had put battalions on the right road, and generally made ourselves conspicuous, if not useful, discontented us.
Russell rose to depart, as he perceived that there was no chance of getting rid of the idlers. "What are you going to do with yourself, Russell?" said Mr. Supine; "we'll walk with you, if you are for walking, this fine evening; only don't let's walk like penny postmen." "But he's in a hurry," said Oliver; "he's going to see a poor woman." "A poor woman!" said Supine; "down this close lane too!"
Word Of The Day
Others Looking