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tell him for you privately what an injustice he has done you by 
publishing the letter in question. It will scarcely be necessary to 
explain it to Mr. Gibson.” Ihave no doubt that Mr. John Gibson 
did me this little service, for I never again had any attack in the 
newspapers, either anonymously or otherwise, during my remaining 
term of office. 
Speaking of these anonymous scribblers in the county news- 
papers, our neighbour the late Mrs. Barbara Dent, once asked: 
“Did you ever see anything that was true in the newspapers which 
went from Keswick ?” 
When the Braithwaite rural messenger was put upon his walk, 
Mr. J. R. Smith, from the surveyor’s office, went the round with 
“old Bill.” Mr. Thomas Gibson tells me that Mr. Beaufort went 
out before this to determine upon the route. He rode a white 
horse, and turned round on the brow top before the mill and took 
a good view of the district. Mr. Smith’s duty was now to insist 
upon that route, to which old Bill’s superior knowledge of the 
floods in that quarter, made him anticipate serious danger and 
difficulty. While Mr. Smith was instructing Mr. Gibson in his 
duties as sub-postmaster, Bill kept putting in his word every now 
and then about some difficulty or other in the way, and how he 
was to doin such and such a case; but the only answer Mr. Smith 
gave him to every enquiry was: ‘You must come the way we 
have come to-day.” The way was round by Ullock and Little 
Braithwaite, terminating at Braithwaite village, the letters for 
Thornthwaite being taken on by the school children. At last Bill 
crowned the difficulties caused by bad roads and watery lonnings 
by saying that there were sometimes very deep floods at Little 
Braithwaite, when Mr. Smith got rather out of temper, and said 
somewhat sternly, ‘‘ Well, you are not to be drowned.” 
Mr. Gibson says: “I have always had a great respect for old 
Bill. I sometimes think of him sitting by our kitchen fire smoking 
his pipe and waiting his time, and admiring our cat. You know 
he was a naturalist, and we had then a very fine young cat, and 
Bill admired it immensely, whether it was moving about or lying 
