of the enormous number of people whose whole
work in life it is to take and send telegrams. If we get there about
five o'clock in the afternoon, we shall see some girls and little
telegraph-boys hurrying about with trays, on which are piles of cut
bread-and-butter, and with great tin cans, like the cans in which hot
water is carried up for your bath. These cans are full of strong, hot
tea. Then we enter one room, so big that it almost startles you, and
see, seated at rows and rows of tables, many men, and nearly all of them
are working away at the telegraph instrument before them--tick, tick,
tick, tack; they cannot hear what you say, even though you talk quite
close to them, for all their attention is taken up by their work. For
eight hours every day they sit here and take and send telegrams. Here
comes the tea; it is poured out into the large cup waiting for it, and
the man takes a drink or a bite as he works. Some of the workers buy jam
to spread on their bread. In one place we see a tray with a large pile
of cakes and biscuits; but these are being sold, though the tea and
bread-and-butter are supplied by the Post-Office to its workers free. It
must be a big business to make tea for about fifteen hundred persons
every day. No wonder cans are used to carry it about, for teapots would
be of very little use. In one room there are men doing all the telegrams
for the daily papers--accounts of great speeches, or races, or anything
important that people expect to hear about--and by means of one
instrument one man can send the same news to five different places at
the same time. This sounds like a miracle to us, who do not understand
how it is done. In another room there are many girls who do just the
same work, and keep the same hours as the men, but are not paid so much
simply because they are women; they are having tea too. They seem to be
very fond of shrimp-paste, which they spread on their bread-and-butter
instead of jam. In every room there is always a loud noise like the wash
of waves; that is made up of hundreds of busy little instruments ticking
away hard all at once. It seems wonderfully quiet when we leave it
behind, and step out into the street again where the lamps are being
lit.

It is nearly six o'clock now, and opposite is the large building of the
Post-Office where the letters are dealt with. Up the steps in front we
see the huge letter-box, with a great gaping slit of a mouth into which
boys and men are po