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Persuasions #2, 1980                                                                                                                                            Page 7

 

FROM THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

From The Daily Telegraph, May 9, 1980

SIR – “‘The post-office is a wonderful establishment!’ said she. ‘The regularity and dispatch of it! If one thinks of all that it has to do, and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing!’”

“‘It is certainly very well regulated.’”

“‘So seldom that any negligence or blunder appears! So seldom that a letter, among the thousands that are constantly passing about the Kingdom, is even carried wrong – and not one in a million, I suppose, actually lost! And when one considers the variety of hands, and of bad hands too, that are to be deciphered, it increases the wonder!’”

Thus wrote Jane Austen in Emma in 1816. Is any further comment required in answer to those who maintain: “You can’t stop progress.”

M. B. Lloyd-Philipps

Croydon, Surrey