'No,' Mrs. Hammond said, waving aside her daughter's flippancy and speaking with some stateliness. It is not destroyed, though such things are not so rare with us as Laura pretends. But why do you ask?'

'Because the rector was not sure when Lord Dynmore meant to return to England,' Clode explained readily. And I thought he mentioned the date in his letter to you, Mrs. Hammond.'

'I do not think so,' said Mrs. Hammond.

'Might I look?'

'Of course,' was the answer. 'Will you find it, Laura? I think it is under the malachite weight in the other room.'

It was, sitting there in solitary majesty. Laura opened it, and took the liberty of glancing through it first. Then she gave it to him. 'There, you unbelieving man,' she said, 'you can look. But he does not say a word about his return.'

The curate read rapidly until he came to one sentence, and on this his eye dwelt a moment. I hear with regret,' it ran, 'that poor Williams is not long for this world. When he goes I shall send you an old friend of mine. I trust he will become an old friend of yours also.' Clode barely glanced at the rest of the letter, but, as he handed it back, he informed himself that it was dated in America two days before Mr. Williams's death.

'No,' he admitted, 'I was wrong. I thought he said when he would return.'

'And you are satisfied now?' said Laura.

'Perfectly,' he answered. 'Perfectly!' with a little unnecessary emphasis.

He lingered long enough after this to give them a personal description of the new-comer-speaking always of him in words of praise-and then he took his leave. As his hand met Laura's, his face flushed ever so slightly and his dark eyes glowed; and the girl, as she turned away, smiled furtively, knowing well, though he had never spoken, that she was the cause of this. So she was, but in part only. At that moment the curate saw something besides Laura-he saw across a narrow strait of trouble the fair land of preferment, his footing on which once gained he might pretend to her and to many other pleasant things at present beyond his reach.

(To be continued.).

32

THE POST-OFFICE IN CHINA.

MANY writers decry the monopoly of the Post-office, others speak of it as a necessary evil, some defend it as an unmixed good; but, as a matter of fact, if not of principle, it is universally admitted in all lands that the conduct of the correspondence of the people is one of the proper functions of Government.'

However true this may be of other countries, it is most certainly not the case-nor ever has been the case-in the oldest of all countries, China. Collectors of postage stamps will produce their half-dozen specimens, labelled 'CHINA,' in protest against this doctrine. Are these not, they will ask, Chinese stampsstamps issued by an Imperial Chinese Post-office? We are prepared sorrowfully to admit, they will say, that the existence of stamps does not necessarily imply the existence of a post-office. The beautiful set of Sedangs' placed on our market two years or so ago were not intended for use in that brilliant invention of 'King Marie I.,' the Kingdom of Deh Sedang: they were designed rather for the voracious but unwary collector. Still these 'China' stamps of ours have been used to frank letters in China; nay, the hieroglyphics upon them are said to read Post-office of the Ta Ch'ing State.' This, indeed, is true; but, for all that, the stamps are not entitled to rank as Imperial stamps of China. The Chinese Government, as everyone knows, looks with grave suspicion on change of any kind, and particularly on change advocated by the intruding foreigner. Still it has been, reluctantly enough, obliged to confess that, as regards mere material power (civilisation it would be loth to call it), the barbarian States of the West have, or seem to have, the advantage. The foreigners who, through miscellaneous motives, continue to press what they call schemes of reform upon China have urged upon her the adoption of various wealth-producing systems, as railways, mints, telegraphs, post-offices. The wealth China was very anxious indeed to secure: it meant power, and power meant the expulsion of the intruders and a relapse into dignified do-nothingness. But to make experiment of these new-fangled schemes on the old soil of China was distasteful in the extreme. Fortunately there was Formosa, hardly yet an integral part of the Empire,

and for that reason a capital place for experiments of this sort. To Formosa was carried the plant of the unlucky Wusung Railway, which foreigners had presumed to lay between Shanghai and Wusung, as what the Americans love to call 'an object lesson.' And in Formosa, some years later, was started the first official attempt at a post-office. The collectors of postage stamps will probably possess two large square labels inscribed FORMOSACHINA,' gay with galloping horses and squirming dragons. These were ordered some four years ago from a well-known English firm of engravers and duly shipped to Formosa. There a scheme was on foot for the conveyance of postal matter, private as well as official, by means of the Government couriers. Each stamp of twenty cash was to frank a letter or packet one stage-the distance that a hardy donkey could run without a meal. Unfortunately, the stamps, though most beautifully executed, did not commend themselves to the consignees. In their stead the first native attempt at a postage stamp appeared. It is simply a piece of the coarse thin Chinese paper an inch and a half broad by three inches long, labelled in Chinese thus: "FORMOSA POSTAL STAMP' (or, in the earlier issue, 'FORMOSA MERCANTILE STAMP'). 'Weight ounces; Kuang-hsü year month dayhour. Sent to The blanks are filled up by hand as thus: 'Weight 3 ounce; 10 o'clock on the 13th of the 1st month of the 16th year of Kuang-hsü. Sent to Hobé.' There is a counterfoil, and on the space between is printed No. ——, postage ———. A red seal is impressed on stamp and counterfoil; the stamp is cut from its foil and pasted on the envelope. The same red seal is again impressed, this time on stamp and envelope, and the letter is ready to start.

Observe that in the earlier issue these labels were inscribed 'Mercantile stamp,' for they were intended to frank private correspondence. I could not, when I was in Formosa a short time ago, discover that they had ever been used by private individuals at all: the only specimens I have met with came from the covers of official despatches. The reason was not hard to guess: the Chinese public do not consider the conveyance of their correspondence as part of the functions of Government. They have, indeed, a profound distrust of most or all Government functions, and would infinitely prefer to convey their correspondence themselves.

Before I endeavour to explain their usual method of managing

this, I may be allowed to dispose of the foreign-made FORMOSA and CHINA postage stamps. The history of the former is curious, and perhaps unique. They lay for some time in one of the brand-new yamêns-public offices-of the brand-new city of Taipeh (Formosa North'), their existence almost forgotten. Meanwhile the other experiment of the energetic Governor-the railway-was being pushed forward as energetically as his very slow-going native subordinates would allow. At last a section was complete, and two little stations erected. Each had its ticket office and its booking clerk. (When I saw him of Taipeh, he was asleep in a long cane chair, while a crony sat nodding over a pipe.) The ticket offices were there, but the tickets had been forgotten. In this emergency the English Chief Engineer bethought him of the foreign postage stamps, which it was agreed on all hands were too good to be wasted. They were produced, surcharged 'Office of Trade' instead of 'Post-office,' and 'ten cents' in place of twenty cash.' Then they were sold to the would-be railway traveller at ten for the dollar. When the ticket collector came round, the passenger pulled out his sheet of stamps and detached one. All was, at that time, simplicity: there was but one class available to the ordinary public-the third class. You could only go to one station, and the fare to that was a postage stamp.

The CHINA adhesives have had a less chequered career. It is some fourteen years ago since the German Commissioner of Customs at Tientsin started what he trusted would prove the nucleus of a Chinese State Post-office. His couriers were to run daily to Peking, and twice a week or so to Chefoo Newchwang and Chinkiang. In other respects the service was to be assimilated to the ordinary European model, and of course there were postage stamps. The scheme has been extremely useful to foreigners in Peking at all seasons of the year, and to their countrymen at the northern ports when frozen in for the three winter months. But south of Chefoo it has never taken root, so excellently served are the residents by the numerous foreign postoffices. As for the Chinese themselves, outside of the Customs native staff it is doubtful if the service is even known to anybody, much less used by anybody. They say that, with pardonable misconception, the first postmen (who then wore uniforms) were arrested by the local magistrates as vagrants; nowadays they pass a quieter, if less gaudy, existence in mufti.

Perhaps the arrests, if such took place, were due to suspicion on the part of the authorities that the privileges of the State Courier Service were being infringed. For many centuries public despatches have been conveyed through China by means of a department of the Board of War. Post-roads, originally excellent but now disgraceful, radiate from Peking to all parts of the empire, and at distances regulated by the nature of the country are stations where a supply of horses is supposed to be kept-much as in Siberia-for the furthering of official correspondence. Despite the badness of the roads and the generally dilapidated condition of the ponies (they are hardly big enough to be called horses), surprising distances are, on urgent occasions, covered by this means. In theory the greatest speed is some 200 miles a day, and it is claimed that this is often actually attained. But in this, for China, rapid means of communication the general public is not permitted to share, any more than it may in England avail itself of the services of a Queen's Messenger.

It is not to be imagined that a veritable nation of shopkeepers like the Chinese would remain, owing to this refusal of their Government to convey their correspondence, destitute of a postal service. They have indeed a very complete system of their own, entirely independent of the State. In every town of any size may be seen ten or a dozen shops with the sign Hsin Chü, 'letteroffice,' or postal establishment, suspended outside. Their business is to carry, not letters only, but small parcels, packets of silver, and the like, usually to other towns in the same province, but also on occasion to other provinces. They are in fact general carriers, or, perhaps it would be fairer to say, they occupy much the same position in China now as did the agents' at Harwich or Dover of the Postmaster-General at the beginning of the eighteenth century-so miscellaneous are the packages committed to their charge. They have no fixed tariff varying according to weight, and there appears to be no limit, within reason, to the size of letters or parcels they will carry. The charge for letters is fairly constant, but in estimating the cost of conveyance of parcels the size and shape alone seem to be taken into account. A rough calculation is then made, which the sender is at libertyif he can to abate. In fact, the transmission of parcels is regarded as being quite as much a matter of bargaining as the purchase of a pig. As there is no monopoly, each post-office tries to underbid its rivals, and competition sometimes verges on the