THE CORNISH MAIL 123 



boots at this hotel, and collected the guests' letters for 

 the North and London mails, before my first visit to 

 Falmouth, in the fifties, is there still. He was boots 

 before the railway was made from Truro, and when 

 we could only reach Penzance by taking coach across 

 to Kedruth (whence may be seen the English Channel 

 in the east and the Atlantic in the west). He is 

 a faithful servant of the establishment ruled by the 

 genial Mitchells — the father in the past, the daughter 

 in the present — to this day. 



Tribute has already been paid in another work to 

 the extreme sagacity of mail-coach horses in Scotland. 

 A colleague of the past relates a story of remarkable 

 intelligence shown by an English horse drawing a 

 mail-cart forty years ago in distant parts of Corn- 

 wall. It is best told in the postmaster's own words : 



' Back in the early fifties, I was the clerk at Truro, and passing 

 rich on fifty pounds a year. It was my duty, in addition to simdry 

 odd jobs during the day, to do the whole of the night sorting, and 

 to take charge of the office from ten p.m. to five a.m. At that time 

 Truro was the forwarding office for all the district westwards, 

 and the correspondence for all the North of England and the 

 Midlands passed through it. There was a mail-cart which left 

 Penzance at ten p.m., and leaving Hayle, Camborne, and 

 Redruth en route, arrived at Truro at two the following morning. 

 This was the up North mail, forming a junction with the coach 

 starting from Falmouth at two a.ra., and covering the ground to 

 Truro in a single stage. The driver of the cart was one of the 

 hangers-on to be found attached to almost every country inn. 

 Half stable-boy, half boots, he was a sort of man of all work, 

 and could do anything, from driving a pair of horses to waiting 

 at table. 



The twenty-six-mile drive from Penzance to Trui'o in the 



