One of the many things we take for granted in the twentieth century is the speedy collection and delivery of letters to and from all parts of the world at astonishingly cheap rates. A husband away –1– a business trip can write home to his wife two thousand miles away knowing that the letter will reach her in a few days. His special air-letter may cost him less than a loaf of bread or his own bus fare to work. This service, however, is a blessing of comparatively recent –2–.
Until modern times the cost of sending letters privately was so great that the arrival of a letter was a considerable –3– and might even cost financial hardship to the receiver who had to bear the charges. There were, indeed, from the Middle Ages onwards, special messengers who –4– state correspondence, and other messengers employed to go and return with news between the great monasteries or the great merchants houses, but for centuries there was no –5– post service by which private letters could be sent. It was not until 1840 that the official organization known as the Penny Post was –6– in Great Britain and gave ordinary people cheap and efficient postal deliveries. The postal services since then have given us many –7– advantages. But there has been one result which makes us sometimes –8– the passing of the bad old days. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the arrival of a letter was a great occasion, and the letter writer knew it. He did not –9– himself to brief information about his own health and –10– about his correspondent s, but he would mention the things he had heard or the things that happened around. 来源：www.examda.com 1. A.onB.atC.withD.for