"These are the district mails, ma'am," explained Mr Bright; "during the
last half-hour and more they have been hurrying towards us from all
quarters of London; the nearest being brought by men on foot, the more
distant bags by vans. Some are still on their way; all will concentrate
here at last, in time for sorting."

The contents of these bags as they came in were shot out, and the
facing-tables--all of which had begun to show symptoms of the flood
going down and dry land appearing--were flooded and reflooded again and
again to a greater depth than before.

"The mail will be late to-night," observed Miss Lillycrop, with an
assured nod.

"O no, ma'am, it won't," replied Bright, with an easy smile, and May
laughed as they returned to the hall to inspect the work in detail.

"Here, you see, we stamp the letters."

Mr Bright stopped in front of a long table, at which was standing a row
of stampers, who passed letters under the stamps with amazing rapidity.
Each man or youth grasped a stamp, which was connected with a machine on
a sort of universal joint. It was a miniature printing-machine, with a
little inking-roller, which was moved over the types each time by the
mere process of stamping, so the stamper had only to pass the letters
under the die with the one hand and stamp with the other as fast as he
could. The rate varied, of course, considerably. Nervous and anxious
stampers illustrated more or less the truth of the proverb, "The more
hurry the less speed," while quiet, steady hands made good progress.
They stamped on the average from 100 to 150 letters in the minute, each
man.

"You see, ma'am," remarked Mr Bright, "it's the way all the world over:
cool-headed men who know their powers always get on best. The
stamping-machine is a great improvement on the old system, where you had
to strike the inker first, and then the letter. It just doubled the
action and the time. We have another ingeniously contrived stamp in the
office. It might not occur to you that stamping parcels and other
articles of irregular shape is rather difficult, owing to the stamper
not striking flatly on them. To obviate this, one of our own men
invented a stamp with an india-rubber neck, so that, no matter how
irregular the surface of the article may be, the face of the stamp is
forced flat upon it by one blow."

"When stamped," continued Mr Bright, moving on, "the letters are taken
by boys, as you see, to the sorters. You