INSUFFICIENTLY ADDRESSED.

Evening Post, Volume LIX, Issue 11, 13 January 1900, Page 3 (Supplement)

INSUFFICIENTLY ADDRESSED.

In an article in the September number of CasselPs Magazine, the author, Mr. B. Fletcher Robinson, tells of some postoffice difficulties :—ln: — In one department Gome 400 postmen were at work sorting letters for delivery in their own district, the E.C. In another the piles of letters "To be left till called for" were being ranged in order. In a third those letters that were insufficiently addressed were under scrutiny by a special staff. "Have you many letters that give you trouble?" I asked one of their number. "A good few. Some 28,000 last year were posted without any address at all. We keep a record of our most remarkable triumphs in interpretation.' Here are two volumes of them, if you care to took through them." The spelling and writing, the copies of which, made through tracing paper, were preserved therein, were certainly remarkable. Difficult, indeed, appeared such riddles as Obanvidok, Bucon Palus, Ship in Hungar, Selorhom — Tobiekaldfor, and Jeripintine; and great credit, did it reflect on the scrutineer who from such unpromising materials was able to despatch these remarkable epistles to their proper addresses at Holborn Viaduct, Buckingham Palace, Chipping Ongar, Sailors' Home — to be called for, and Jarrow-upon-Tyne. "I sometimes think," continued the official meditatively, "that the public imagines we could get a letter to the moon if necessary. Just after the Paris ■ |iad run on the Manacles we received a letter despatched by some district council in the North which had for its address: "The steward on board the Paris, on the Manacles Rocks or elsewhere." I suppose they thought that wherever land projected we were certain to have a branch office, with possibly a telegraphic address far Davy Jones. A German circular that arrived the other day bore a more sensible inscription. The sender had at Jeast recognised the fact that there was a limit to our powers, for he had transcribed upon it, 'xi the receiver be dead, please do not send this on to him.' "