"A FLIGHT UPON FLYING"

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 78, 29 September 1938, Page 7

"A FLIGHT UPON FLYING"

A century or so ago—or so at least we shall be saying—no one would, of course, ever have dreamed of the possibility of air mails from Australia, says the "Manchester Guardian." But we should have been wrong; the following passage from a magazine article which appeared in the year 1842 would have refuted us:—

"It is—as in due time it may be — the year of grace 1942. I am standing on Shakespeare's Cliff, or what remains of it, wondering at the ruins of the railroad and waiting for the daily post from Australasia. I see a speck in the clouds, and hail the harbinger of news: the postman alights for half a second (his regulation breathing time), folds his caoutchouc wings, sucks in a concentrated lozenge the virtues of a quart of London porter, blows his nose with an asbestos pocket handkerchief, and is off again like a rocket before I have well seen whether my letters bear the post-mark of Adelaide or of Sydney. Verily, if the world is to last much longer, the sons of our children may see such things."

The ghost to convict us of our error would be that of the egregious Martin Tupper, that apostle of platitudes who was the idol of the middle classes a century ago. Writing for a magazine long since defunct a series of "Fanciful Essays," he had for his first subject "A Flight Ugon Flying."