The division of the letters, which can hardly be called a system of sorting, is a proceeding worthy of study. Some letters are placed up on end against sweetie-bottles in the window, others are laid down on shelves, others again are spread out on drawers or tables, quite in an arbitrary fashion. The postmistress has no difficulty in reading the addresses, as a rule, but the name of a new-comer seems to demand a little study: the letter is looked at back and front, and then laid down hesitatingly in a place by itself, as if it were an uncanny thing. The address of a letter for any young lady supposed to be engaged in correspondence of a tender kind seems also to require scrutiny; and should she happen to be well in at the door, it is immediately handed to her, those who are in the secret and those who are not forming different ideas as to the reason for this special mark of favour. While this is being done, an undefined sensation is produced in the small crowd, and the recipient retires in confusion to peruse the letter in peace and quiet elsewhere. At length the whole treasures are ready, and the distribution to the eager callers is a matter of a very few minutes, to be renewed again at the same hour next day.
Something like this is the routine observed when the delivery is being effected at small rural Post-offices in our own days--the keeper of the post being a shopkeeper, generally a grocer.
In the earlier history of the post, and up till the time of mail-coaches, the Post-office was very generally to be found established at the inn of the place. There was an evident convenience in this, owing to the innkeeper being the postmaster in the other and original sense of the provider of horses to ride post, when it was common to send on expresses, by means of these agents, from stage to stage. But the innkeepers, being often farmers besides, had business more important than that of the post to look after, and consequently the work was delegated to others. The duty of receiving and despatching the mails was frequently left to waiters or chambermaids, with the undesirable but inevitable result that the work was badly done. Often there was no separate place set apart for Post-office business; letters were sorted in the bar or in one of the public rooms, where any one could see them, thereby excluding all possibility of secrecy in dealing with the correspondence. Referring to the middle of last century, a surveyor expressed himself to the effect that "the head ostler was often the postmaster's prime minister in matters relating to the mails."