An Ingenious Excuse.

Manawatu Herald, 20 April 1899, Page 2

An Ingenious Excuse.

_♦ The post office officials are as a rule painstaking and careful, and never, well hardly ever, make a mistake. Of course when they do they have got to make the best of a bad job, and their ingenuity is something wonderful in this line, as the following true tale will reveal. Mr Smith, at least we will call him so, though that is not the name he is known by, had occasion to -•* send a telegram to his merchant needing a speedy reply. To his astonishment none came on the day oi sending, so the following day he wir«d! to know the reason why. The reply came that an answer had been sent, and then trouble arose. The receiving yyl officer declared that no telegram had 1 come, and the sending office was equally positive one had been dispatched. Various official forms travelled to and through, when the the sending office, refused to acknowledge that any mistake could possibly , have occurred at their end, and asr convinced that the receiving office was not to blame, put it on record, as their explanation to the sender, that the message " had dropped out " between the two offices ! It one could accept this excuse with the seriousnesss with which it was made, a nervous fear would come over the user of the telegraphs as to the chances of every message dropping out in inconvenient places, but we expect this officially recorded instance is the only one that • has been known in the Service.