ivance for this. A little round wheel spins
at a tremendous pace, and on it are dark lines covered with wet ink. A
man holds the letters and pushes them one by one up to the wheel, which,
when it touches them, drags them through a narrow space in front, and as
they pass the wheel the ink-lines run across the stamp and mark it so
that it cannot be used again. So quickly does the little wheel whirr and
the letters spin past that five hundred are done in a minute. Think of
that; it means nearly nine a second. Nine letters stamped while you say
'One--two,' which is a second. Some letters are too thick and others too
big to go through the little space by the wheel, so the man who is
looking after them picks out those and throws them up on to a tray, from
which they are gathered up and carried to another man, who stamps each
by hand, a much slower process.

When the letters are stamped they are carried off to other men, who sort
them out, throwing them into different divisions, according to the part
of London for which they are intended, and any that he cannot read, any
that have not got a sufficient address, or any that have not a stamp on,
are put aside. Those with bad or insufficient addresses are called
'blind,' which is a funny word to use in this sense; they are carried
off to some men, who sit with ponderous books in front of them, and who
work solemnly, hunting out names and addresses. Perhaps one address is
so badly written that it looks to you and me just as if a beetle had
fallen into an ink-bottle and walked over the paper. But the man at the
desk is accustomed to bad writing, he soon makes it out, and writes it
neatly so that it can be read and the letter sent on. Another person has
put the street, perhaps on his envelope, but not the district of London,
and this is hunted up and supplied, and so on; and always as the men
work, gradually reducing the pile of letters before them, more are
added, so that it seems as if their work would never end. Near the first
men who were sorting letters are others sorting out packets and throwing
them into baskets. Fast as they work, they cannot keep up with the fresh
piles always poured in. They pitch the parcels into the baskets with
speed and accuracy generally, but sometimes in their haste a packet
flies over the rail and hits the head of a person walking past.

Here is a little table where a man is standing looking at some odd
things--a clothes brush, a box of flowers, a lo