ed with the dregs of the stable-yard. At the
same time the innkeepers were alive to their own interests, for they
sometimes attracted travellers to their houses by granting them franks
for the free transmission of their letters. The salaries of the
postmasters were not cast in a liberal mould, and what they did receive
was subject to the charge of providing candles, wax, string, etc.,
necessary for making up the mails.

[Illustration: THE MAIL-COACH GUARD.]

The following are examples of the salaries of postmasters about a
hundred years ago:--

Paisley, 1790 to 1800, L33
Dundee, 1800, 50
Arbroath, 1763 to 1794, 20
Aberdeen, 1763 to 1793, about 90
Glasgow, 1789 140
and Clerk 30

Constant appeals reached headquarters for "an augmentation," which was
the term then applied to an increase of salary, and in the circumstances
it is not surprising that the post-office work was indifferently done.
Attendance had to be given to the public during the day, and when the
mail passed through a town in the dead hours of night some one had to be
up to despatch or receive the mail. Sometimes the postmaster, when awoke
by the post-boy's horn, would get up and drop the mail-bag by a hook
and line from his bedroom window. An instance of such a proceeding is
given by Williams in his history of Watford, where the destinies of the
post were at the time presided over by a postmistress. "In response,"
says he, "to the thundering knock of the conductor, the old lady left
her couch, and thrusting her head, covered with a wide-bordered
night-cap, out of the bedroom window, let down the mail-bag by a string,
and quickly returned to her bed again." Coming thus nightly to the open
window must have been a risky duty as regards health for a postmistress.

A hundred years ago the chief post-office in London was situated in
Lombard Street. The scene, if we may judge by a print of the period,
would appear to have been one of quietude and waiting for something to
turn up. In 1829 the General Post Office was transferred to St. Martin's
le Grand, and the departure of the evening mails (when mail-coaches were
in full swing) became one of the sights of London.

Living in an age of cheap postage as we do, we look back upon the rates
charged a century ago with something akin to amazement. In the following
table will be seen some of the inland and foreign