THE MIDNIGHT MAIL.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 329, 16 October 1908, Page 8

THE MIDNIGHT MAIL.

WITH THE POSTAL CAR. QUICK WORK BY NIGHT. A feiv minutes before twelve each night a motor car, with lamps that might illuminate a township, swoops from tho: Chief Post Office into Lambton Quay, and commences a scries of zig-zag drives over half the city that resemble' the movements of a billiard ball propelled by a trick player round an enormous table with about -twenty corners and twice as many pockets. The car is picking up the mails on the "long clearance." which includes the central city, Aro Street, Newtown, and To Aro. Forty pillar-boxes must bo cleared in this area; each bears the imperative summons "Cleared at midnight." Some of them are so close ; together that the. turns and twists of the car's course are like nothing , else so much as .the gambols of a kitten with-a ball of string. Haste is an essonial, for the "short clearance"—Thorndon and tho city south—must,.follow. A pressman who went the midnight ride with Motormailman Wa.rrington found it most exhilarating. The four huge lamps flung out a track for tho car's progress as she reeled through the close darkness. The driver had five years' experience oil motor omnibuses, and he knows every turn and trick of a motor car. This one lurches across roads and round sharp corners as though drunken, and after each : short spurt leans panting alongside a post, not for recovery, but for work. The post, which she'seemed to have stumbled, towards at risk of falling, is another pillar-box.. The driver reaches for a mail bag, finds, without- fumbling, one of forty keys, _ thrusts into ' canvas recesses foolishness, flippancy, heart's sorrow, heart's passion, jumbled together indiscriminately,' flings the bag into the motor, shaves the gutter with the nicest touch as; he backs out, and, with a sudden turn, wo are speeding in another strange'''direction.' "We describe squares and rectangles round town blocks, and indescribable sudden figures turning _in narrow streets, but always tho driver knows what he is doing. Two largo bags are'filled at the Newtown Post Office; the car ramps impatiently at the delay. Then ' there is hill work to be done round the. east side of Newtown, followed by a long, quick slide down wood-blocked Adelaide R-oa<l;' 30 miles an hour, almost. That is the car's limit; she is an 18 horse-power machine,'geared up to 30 miles. She groans up the Ellice Street hill, stops knowingly before obscure red streaks on corner shops, and dips down Majoribanks Street, as tho* witer-chute boats take tho water. We left a few minutes before 12, and at 1.10 a.m. the car is snorting triumph before tho Post Office again, with 33 full bags of mails for the sorter' hands. At 1.50 begins the short clearance, the furthest point of which is Hobson Street. Seven minutes are lost" before the Parliamentary ' Buildings, where the letters ' must hot be- Cleared! before 2.30.' Indefatigable members 1 Their output of' correspondence..' fills . seven bags, though tho session is now elided.' A week ago it might have needed ten. .'.Now fourteen bags suffice for the whole round. • At 2.32 we are back at tho Chief Post ' Office. ' Horses are used on the'uplands, but that will not bo for long. The' motorcar, first tried three months ago, is doing its work too well. ; Early in December- two more motor-cars will arrive > to -the' -order of the Postal Department, with four instead of two, able to'- negotiate the stiffest rise. . The present machine'-will then luxuriate on the straight flat streets of church. Its transfer will be no disgrace. The' motor has served it-s purpose well; the solid rubber tyres, after -working for three months day and night, do hot show a crack; no messenger is required to pick up mails for the driver, as was the case with the old horse vans. But the new cars' will be more up-to-date. They will have no canopy in front, which, with a 'head wind, takes ten miles an'' hour r; '6ffthespeed of the P'Jing full bags into the cars, for,,sorters .to'.empty afterwards and turn inside out' and' snake,' the .letters ' will be tipped' direct 'into baskets through a hole in the roof,' aiid the sorters will lose no time. '•