266 THE COACHING AGE. 



persons travelling on mails at night were the post- 

 masters, or in some instances the postmistresses, 

 where the office was kept by a woman, exchanging 

 letter-bags with the guard. 



There was no clever piece of machinery then exist- 

 ing by which the bags going away from the post- 

 office could be suspended in such a position that 

 the guard might catch hold of them as the mail 

 drove by, and at the same time deposit those he had 

 to leave. 



On a mail at night, if you were entering a long 

 street or village, and the guard began to blow his horn, 

 there being nothing in the road, and the horses hav- 

 ing been changed only a short time before, you at 

 once supposed that you were about to arrive at the 

 village post-office, any doubt upon the subject being 

 shortly afterwards solved by the coachman pulling up 

 at a small house, or it might be the general shop of 

 the village, on the wall or window of which, beneath 

 the usual slit or aperture made for such purposes, you 

 could just discern, either by the light of the moon or 

 the lamps of the mail, the words ' Letter-box.' By 

 the time the mail pulled up, an upper window (if in a 

 very rural locality probably a casement) would be 

 opened, and a ghost-like figure in a white head-cover- 

 ing would appear, handing down, by means of a cord 

 with a hook at the end, one or more leather 



