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CHAPTER VII. 



BY THE NEW FOREST. 



*D.L.T.A.R.' was the sole text of a cabalistic telegram 

 which, in the forties, I used to receive every morning 

 from Southampton, in the telegraph office at Waterloo 

 Station, and send upstairs to the General Manager. 

 In after-years it transpired that the message merely 

 meant that the Dorchester Line of Telegraph was All 

 Right. So much for a mystery ! 



If such were my introduction to official life, before 

 I became a postal servant, almost my last act, under 

 the Postmaster-General, was in like manner associated 

 with Southampton and the skirts of the New Forest, 

 inasmuch as when I was about to leave the Post- 

 Office in 1893, we began to consider, in connection 

 with the parcel post, the expediency of reviving the 

 mail-coach service to Southampton. There was 

 even the idea that, by means of the ordinary mail- 

 carts, we might collect and deliver parcels in con- 

 nection with it throughout the district of the Forest 

 itself. 



For the first thirty miles from the Post-Office we 



