196 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



tions — was to be very extra specially fast, I was 

 called upon to make adequate arrangements, so 

 fell back on something in the David way — a sling 

 and a stone, in the line-and-plummet direction. 

 With this ingenious apparatus (why did I not 

 patent so clever a notion ?) we used to drop the 

 wire that was to be sent, making a descent of, 

 say, eight feet, and thus saving some hundred 

 yards of tramping, which, with the passage 

 upstairs crowded and the B.P. massed below in 

 their cherished haven, the front of the bar, was 

 apt to be tedious. 



My method possessed sporting features to 

 relieve monotony and induce pleasure into busi- 

 ness. A great recommendation was cheapness. 

 All you had to do was to tie your copy in a loop 

 provided for the purpose, and drop the anchor or 

 stone. Did you not want to retain aid below, 

 below, below-o-o-o, where land-lubbers go, while 

 jolly sailor-boys, are up, up aloft ? Dear me ! 

 no ; nothing of the sort — that is where the charm 

 of the system came in so beautifully. Someone 

 was always about in front of the telegraph office. 

 We Britishers are proverbially polite and obliging, 

 as selves and all foreign nations are unanimously 

 agreed, and all you need do to enlist aid, 

 eleemosynary and ready-made, was to call atten- 

 tion to your wants, which were for somebody to 

 hand the plummet arrangement to the "gentleman 

 in the shop." And if you can't catch a person's 

 attention by dropping a stone of four or five 

 pounds on to his head or hat first, he must be 

 too dense for anything. At any rate, I never 

 found one fail to notice the appeal after the 

 plummet tapped the top of him. Now I wonder 

 whether the Department, if it got wind of my 



