¥.— 1

dictating official minutes from nightfall until daybreak with untiring vigour when time was known to be of consequence, and when personal convenience had to be wholly thrust aside. His power of work was prodigious ; his faculty of attracting men to work with him unsurpassed. Organization had a charm for him ; the telegraphs pre-eminently, the savings-bank, the system of accounts, the packet-service, and the registered-letter system all felt the power of his grasp. His pupil, as it were, and, perhaps, his favourite disciple, the late Mr. C. H. B. Patey, C.8., justified all Mr. Scudamoro's confidence, and realised all—perhaps more than all —that he had foreseen of aptitude and capacity. The absorbing nature of the duties in connection with the telegraphs withdrew Mr. Patey in great degree from an active participation in the management of the purely postal side of the department. But not altogether : for he could find time, even amongst his most pressing engagements, to identify himself with the inner life of the office, to share in its social or benevolent gatherings, and to stamp his mind on whatever official questions came before him. In fact, in the later years of his life, important branches of postal work were added to the main duty of conducting telegraph business which was confided to his care, and in all of these he showed the insight and good judgment which made him eminent in the Post Office. The late Mr. Benthall was a valued and most trustworthy servant of the State. He had taken a good degree at Cambridge, and soon rose in oflicial life. He supervised the relations of the department with the railways with an astuteness and cordiality which left nothing to be desired. He was greatly respected in the railway world. Numerous Crown post-office buildings throughout the country are witnesses of the careful hand and experienced judgment of John Strange Baker. He was much beloved. Mark Beauchamp Peacock, W. H. Ashurst, and Henry Watson bore the brunt of the legal work of the department in London, as did the genial and accomplished Robert Thompson in Dublin. They were all. men of capacity and honour. William Bokenhain, Thomas Boucher, and Thomas Jeffery will long be remembered as Controllers in succession of the Circulation Office, and men of great experience and shrewd judgment. Controllers of the Savings Bank who have passed away are no fewer than four in number —the energetic and many-sided Chetwynd, better known, however, as Receiver and Accountant-General; A. Milliken, A. 0. Thomson, and G. Ramsay. They built up that great edifice in which so many of our officers look after the finance of the toiling million. The "eyes of the department," once said a great authority, "are the Surveyors." Since penny-postage times, how many of these valued officers have fallen away from the side of their old and honoured colleague and doyen, Mr. W. J. Godby. South Wales still remembers Mr. Gay; Cambridgeshire, the versatile Anthony Trollope; and Manchester has reared a monument to the beloved St. Lawrence Beaufort. There are other names to be recalled — Creswell, Smith, Johnson, Ridcout, Stow, and Neal of old; those of Edward Page, Hodgson, and Churchill; of Wedderburn and West; of John Allen, Henry James, T. B. Harkness, and J. P. Good; and of John Kains in the far-away West Indies. The telegraphs are still young in the history of the Post Office. Mr. R. S. Culley is with us yet, but for Mr. T. H. Sanger and Messrs. Shaw, Tansley, and Walsh, the tale of years is told. What would the Post Office bo without accounts? Where could abler men. be found than in the latest three—George Richardson (the last to pass away), G. Chetwynd, C.8., and F. I. Scudainore, C.8., who filled in turn the heavy post of Receiver and Accountant-General? What wonders the three accomplished in making accounts.»clear and simple—in dealing with the vast mass of financial work which presents so many aspects as that arising out of the postal revenue, and how the last-named two, especially, diverging from the beaten track, were always ready successfully to grapple with new problems and untie the tightest knots ! As to the Medical Department, Dr. Gavin, of the cholera year, sleeps in the far-off Crimea, and Dr. Waller Lewis in his native land. Happily, all that have written Finis on their postal work have not yet gone to the great majority. Sir John Tilley, X.C.8., is as vigorous as over. 'Fifty or sixty years of hard and responsible work have made little difference in him. He built—or at his instance was built up— the new post-office now about to be devoted to the purpose of a central telegraph-station. He reduced rates of postage, and prepared the way for a parcel-post. Mr. Frederic Hill still lives at Hampstead, at an age frosty yet kindly—advanced indeed, but still, at eighty-six, full of vigour. At the Post Office he was the main agent in reducing the cost of the packet-service, in cheapening postage to the Continent, and in at least preparing the way for the postal-order scheme which the late Mr. Chetwynd brought to maturity. In a hundred other ways he did good service to the State. Shall we not rejoice that the Post Office is so rich in the record of good and faithful servants — men whose lives have been spent within, as it were, the official walls; of whose labours, diligence, devotion, and consummate skill the general public have heard but little, but who have done —some, perhaps, unseen, unthanked, unknown —with all their might the duty which lay to their hand? Long may this spirit still prevail with us, and keep our Office foremost in efficiency, usefulness, and zeal for the public good amongst the several branches of Her Majesty's Civil Service. In fifty years the Post Office, in its modern garb, has been before the public, working under its eye, and, even though it be its servant, hand-in-hand with it. So a strong bond of mutual good-will and confidence has grown up. The servant has been not ungenerously treated; and the master is, with no ungrudging hand, heartily well served. Shall we not rejoice that it is so —that, looking back on these fifty years of labour, whether of ourselves or our predecessors, we are conscious of ever striving for the public good ? We might, perhaps, claim that, as officials, we are not always mindful of what is pleasant and convenient; and, in giving of our best, whether of brain or muscle, we' have at least earned the right to hug the flattering thought that Diogenes, looking around for the State's bad bargains, need not trouble himself to bring his lantern to the Post Office. . . .

65