country to do became aware that I was anxious for good results.
It is amusing to watch how a passion will grow upon a man. During
those two years it was the ambition of my life to cover the country
with rural letter-carriers. I do not remember that in any case a
rural post proposed by me was negatived by the authorities; but I
fear that some of them broke down afterwards as being too poor, or
because, in my anxiety to include this house and that, I had sent
the men too far afield. Our law was that a man should not be required
to walk more than sixteen miles a day. Had the work to be done been
all on a measured road, there would have been no need for doubt as
to the distances. But my letter-carriers went here and there across
the fields. It was my special delight to take them by all short
cuts; and as I measured on horseback the short cuts which they would
have to make on foot, perhaps I was sometimes a little unjust to
them.

All this I did on horseback, riding on an average forty miles a
day. I was paid sixpence a mile for the distance travelled, and it
was necessary that I should at any rate travel enough to pay for
my equipage. This I did, and got my hunting out of it also. I have
often surprised some small country postmaster, who had never seen
or heard of me before, by coming down upon him at nine in the
morning, with a red coat and boots and breeches, and interrogating
him as to the disposal of every letter which came into his office.
And in the same guise I would ride up to farmhouses, or parsonages,
or other lone residences about the country, and ask the people how
they got their letters, at what hour, and especially whether they
were delivered free or at a certain charge. For a habit had crept
into use, which came to be, in my eyes, at that time, the one sin
for which there was no pardon, in accordance with which these rural