lycrop, "what does he do with a letter
if he chances to forget?"

"Why, he must get other sorters to help him."

"And what happens if he finds a letter so badly addressed that he cannot
read it?"

"Sends it to the blind division; we shall come to that presently," said
Mr Bright. "Meanwhile we shall visit the hospital I need scarcely
explain to you that the hospital is the place to which wounded letters
and packages are taken to be healed. Here it is."

The party now stood beside a table, at which several clerks--we might
almost say surgeons--were at work, busy with sealing-wax and string.

The patients were a wondrous lot, and told eloquently of human
carelessness. Here were found letters containing articles that no
envelope of mere paper could be expected to hold--such as bunches of
heavy keys, articles of jewellery, etcetera, which had already more than
half escaped from their covers. There were also frail cardboard boxes,
so squeezed and burst that their contents were protruding, and parcels
containing worsted and articles of wearing apparel, which had been so
carelessly put up as to have come undone in the mail-bags. All these
things were being re-tied, re-folded, patched up here and there with
sealing-wax, or put into new covers, by the postal surgeons, and done
with as much care, too, as though the damage had been caused by the
Post-Office rather than by carelessness in the public.

But among these invalided articles were a few whose condition
accidentally revealed attempts to contravene the postal laws. One
letter which had burst completely open revealed a pill-box inside, with
"Dinner Pills" on the outside. On examination, the pills turned out to
be two sixpences wrapped up in a scrap of paper, on which was
written--"Thought you had no money to get a stamp with, so sent you
some." It is contrary to regulations to send coin by post without
registering the letter. The unfortunate receiver would have to pay
eightpence, as a registration fee, for this shilling!

While the party was looking at the hospital work another case was
discovered. A book-packet came open and revealed a letter inside. But
still further, the letter was found to contain sixpence in silver, sent
to defray postage when the book should be returned. Here was a double
sin! No letter, or writing of the nature of a letter, is allowed to go
by book post, and coin may not be sent unregistered. In this case the
book would be forward