(_b_) Never to present an order for payment on the day on which it is issued, nor, on the other hand, to allow two months to elapse before calling for payment.[195]
(_c_) When sending an order, either to send it to its destination singly, or in a letter signed only by initials. Money-orders passing between friends need not be accompanied with information such as is sometimes required in business transactions.
[184] The irregularities and eccentricities in the numbering of streets and houses is a great difficulty. On one occasion a London inspector of letter-carriers, going round the districts, noticed a brass-plate with the number 95 between two houses numbered respectively 15 and 16. He made inquiry, when the old lady who tenanted the house said that the number had belonged to a former residence, and, thinking it a pity that it should be thrown away, she had transferred it to her new home, supposing that it would do as well as any other number!
[185] About two hundred letters pass through the General Post-Office every day unsealed.
[186] It is calculated that 91 per cent. of the letters circulating through the United Kingdom are enclosed in envelopes; the number of those sent abroad in envelopes is somewhat smaller, or about 65 per cent.
[187] The number of newspapers delivered in 1862 amounted to nearly 73,000,000, a considerable increase on the previous year. The number of book-packets exceeded 14,000,000, being an increase on the previous year of about 1,700,000, or nearly 14 per cent. Upwards of 400,000 newspapers, or about one in two hundred, were undelivered in the same year, about half of which failures arose from improper or incorrect addresses, while the remainder were owing to the newspapers becoming detached from their covers in transit through the post.
[188] It is calculated that every year nearly fifty thousand postage-stamps rub off letters and newspapers in their passage through the Post-Office. At one time the quality of the adhesive matter was called in question, loud complaint, even ridicule, settling on the theme. Now, however, that the gum is better the number of stamps which "will not stick" is scarcely perceptibly smaller.
[189] Only one instance is on record of any violent and wilful attempt to damage a pillar letter-box. This is the more wonderful as the temptation to lift the lid and contribute articles not contemplated by our postage-system must naturally be strong in the eyes of our City Arabs. A singular accident befell one of these letter-boxes (1862) in Montrose. A quantity of gas from the street pipes seems to have got into the box, and a night-watchman to have ignited it by striking a match on the top in order to light his pipe. The top was blown off and the pillar-box hopelessly damaged, although the watchman and the letters escaped without injury.