RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31441, 7 August 1967, Page 15

RANDOM REMINDER

LIFE, IN A BOX

Thousands of people spend thousands of hours studying thousands of other people—their political ' leanings, their social shortcomings, their drinking and smoking, their dress, their education, everything that makes them tick. They put people on to couches to explore their minds, under X-ray to examine their bodies, they study their handwriting and the humps on their heads. There is, however, a source of information about people which has, we would say, been largely ignored. A rural mail contractor has written to us to tell us something of his own researches in the fleld. He claims that the

personalities of his customers can be deduced with considerable accuracy by a study of their mail boxes. Psychologists may be Interested in this. What would they make of the box which has a distinct forward lean, with the contents likely to come out ! quicker than they can be put in? There is a type of box which falls to ground on a touch. There Is the leaky one, with a sock draped over it on a wet day. What sort of man owns the box which lives in a hedge, becoming visible only twice a year after hedgMutting? This mall contractor says he has a bracket of three which resembles a mat mai in a duck pond, after heavy rain; and he does not even

have the shooting rights. Or a propellerdriven boat Another favourite—and a satisfactory object for study—is the box with a whippy linked chain. After throwing back the lid, the mail man must judge the oscillations correctly. At other places, he must learn to love the muddy approaches, the deep ruts at an hotel, which he reaches too early for the place to provide a reviver in the ordinary course of business, too late for the after-hours trade. But like most studies of human nature, this one would provide its comforting findings. There are the firm, freshly-painted largecapacity boxes, and there is Christmas Eve, when, apparently, all is forgiven, on either side.