Business Girls Meet at Lunch

Manawatu Times, Volume LIX, Issue 7486, 9 June 1934, Page 2

Business Girls Meet at Lunch

MISS M. CRANSTON THE SPEAKER Miss C. Grace presided at the fortnightly meeting of the Business Girls’ Club, thcro being a good attendance at Messrs Collinson and Cunninghanie’s on Thursday. Visitors welcomed included Mrs Mclvor, Misses Bowden and J. Fenwick, and an apology was received from Mrs A. E. Hansford. Reminders wore given of various club fixtures and of the closing date of the club competition. An unusually interesting address on “Old Postal Days” was given by Miss M. Cranston, who traced the various methods used from the earliest times when messages were scratched or drawn upon stone. She referred to tho recording of the Ten Commandments and tho Egyptian method of using the unravelled stem of the papyrus reed, wetted and stretched on rollers, much as the Maoris used flax, and later the dried skins of animals, from which they made parchment. Miss Cranston went on to'describo the methods used by the Chinese and Japanese in the second century, while in the eighth century' it was shown that tho Arabs were the first people to use linen and cotton rags for the manufacture of pulp for paper making, this knowledge eventually being taken to Britain by the Crusaders. The postal service, she said, dated back to the early days of the great Empires of the East, when the Persian kings : inaugurated the first known system ' Olio of the earliest postal documents i in existence was in the Berlin 1 museum, and this took the form of a 1 letter bill of the mail, for the Court of i one of the Ptolemies. Miss Cranston traced the development of the postal c service down through the ages to the I

inauguration of the penny post, refer-' ring to many interesting historical documents, also to the vagaries of charges, mentioning, by the way, that when letters were first posted to New Zealand from England it cost niuupenco for tho sending of each one by the fastest route and sixpence otherwise. An interesting description of tho first post-boys, the thrilling experiences of couriers, were vividly described, dealing particularly with England, and in conclusion Miss Cranston touched on post-boys of other lands—the native runner qf Africa, bearing the written message thrust through a cleft stick, tho tireless, padpad of his bare feet through the dangerous paths of the jungle; the Indian bearing his message wrapped in the folds of his turban, kept safe and dry when fording streams; finally describing the method adopted by the Maoris in tho early days, precious missives being carried wrapped in a covering of flax. The vote of thanks to the speaker was conveyed by Miss Grace.