Hugh Lofting: Doctor Dolittle's Post Office

Very well, then. Now, it happened one day that a ship called at the coast of West Africa, and delivered a letter for Koko, the King of Fantippo. King Koko had never seen a stamp before and, sending for a white merchant who lived in his town, he asked him what queen's face was this on the stamp which the letter bore.

Then the white merchant explained to him the whole idea of penny postage and government mails. And he told him that in England all you had to do when you wanted to send a letter to any part of the world was to put a stamp on the envelope with the queen's head on it and place it in a letter–box on the street corner, and it would be carried to the place to which you addressed it.

"Ah, hah!" said the King. "A new kind of magic. I understand. Very good. The High Kingdom of Fantippo shall have a post office of its own. And my serene and beautiful face shall be on all the stamps and my letters shall travel by faster magic than any of them."

"A rare Fantippo stamp"

Then King Koko of Fantippo, being a very vain man, had a fine lot of stamps made with his pictures on them, some with his crown on and some without; some smiling, some frowning; some with himself on horseback, some with himself on a bicycle. But the stamp which he was most proud of was the tenpenny stamp which bore a picture of himself playing golf—a game which he had just recently learned from some Scotchmen who were mining for gold in his kingdom.

And he had letter–boxes made, just the way the white trader had told him they had in England, and he set them up at the corners of the streets and told his people that all they had to do was to put one of his stamps on their letters, poke them into these boxes and they would travel to any corner of the earth they wished.

But presently the people began complaining that they had been robbed. They had paid good money for the stamps, they said, trusting in their magic power, and they had put their letters in the boxes at the corners of the streets as they had been told. But one day a cow had rubbed her neck against one of the letter boxes and burst it open, and inside there were all the people's letters, which had not traveled one inch from where they put them!

Then the king was very angry and, calling for the white trader, he said:

"You have been fooling My Majesty. These stamps you speak of have no magic power at all. Explain!"

Then the trader told him that it was not through magic in the stamps or boxes that letters traveled by mail. But proper post offices had mail–men, or postmen, who collected the letters out of these boxes. And he went on to explain to the King all the other duties of a post office and the things that made letters go.

So then the King, who was a persevering man, said that Fantippo should have its post office, anyway. And he sent to England for hundreds of postmen's uniforms and caps. And when these arrived he dressed a lot of black men up in them and set them to work as postmen.

But the black men found the heavy uniforms dreadfully hot for Fantippo weather, where they wear only a string of beads. And they left off the uniforms and wore only the caps. That is how the Fantippo postman's uniform came to be a smart cap, a string of beads and a mail bag.

Then when King Koko had got his mail–men, the Royal Fantippo post office began really working. Letters were collected from the boxes at street corners and sent off when ships called; and incoming mail was delivered at the doors of the houses in Fantippo three times a day. The post office became the busiest place in town.

Now, the peoples of West Africa have curious tastes in dress. They love bright things. And some Fantippo dandy started the idea of using up old stamps off letters by making suits of clothes out of them. They looked very showy and smart and a suit of this kind made of stamps became a valuable possession among the natives.

About this time, too, in the civilized parts of the world one of the things that arose out of all this penny–postage business was the craze or hobby for collecting stamps. In England and America and other countries people began buying stamp albums and pasting stamps in them. A rare stamp became quite valuable.

And it happened that one day two men, whose hobby was collecting stamps, came to Fantippo in a ship. The one stamp they were both most anxious to get for their collections was the "twopenny–halfpenny Fantippo red," a stamp which the King had given up printing—for the reason that the picture of himself on it wasn't handsome enough. And because he had given up printing it, it became very rare.

As soon as these two men stepped ashore at Fantippo a porter came up to them to carry their bags. And right in the middle of the porter's chest the collectors spied the twopenny–halfpenny Fantippo red! Then both of the stamp collectors offered to buy the stamp. And as each was anxious to have it for his collection, before long they were offering high prices for it, bidding against one another.

King Koko got to hear of this and he called up one of these stamp collectors and asked him why men should offer high prices for one old used stamp. And the white man explained to him this new craze for stamp collecting that was sweeping over the civilized world.

So King Koko, although he thought that the civilized world must be crazy, decided it would be a good idea if he sold stamps for collections—much better business than selling them at his post office for letters. And after that whenever a ship came into the harbor of Fantippo he sent his Postmaster–General—a very grand man, who wore two strings of beads, a postman's cap and no mail bag—out to the ship with stamps to sell for collections.

Such a roaring trade was done in this way that the King set the stamp printing presses to work more busily than ever, so that a whole new set of Fantippo stamps should be ready for sale by the time the same ship called again on her way home to England.

But with this new trade in selling stamps for stamp collections, and not for proper mailing purposes, the Fantippo mail service was neglected and became very bad.

Now, Doctor Dolittle, while Zuzana was talking over the tea about her letter which she had sent to her cousin—and to which no answer had ever come—suddenly remembered something. On one of his earlier voyages the passenger ship by which he had been traveling had stopped outside this same harbor of Fantippo, although no passengers had gone ashore. And a postman had come aboard to sell a most elegant lot of new green and violet stamps. The Doctor, being at the time a great stamp collector, had bought three whole sets.

And he realized now, as he listened to Zuzana, what was wrong with the Fantippo post office and why she had never got an answer to the letter which would have saved her husband from slavery.

As Zuzana and Begwe rose to go, for it was beginning to get dark, the Doctor noticed a canoe setting out toward his ship from the shore. And in it, when it got near, he saw King Koko himself, coming to the white man's boat with stamps to sell.

So the Doctor got talking to the King and he told him in plain language that he ought to be ashamed of his post office. Then, giving him a cup of China tea, he explained to him how Zuzana's letter had probably never been delivered to her cousin.

The King listened attentively and understood how his post office had been at fault. And he invited the Doctor to come ashore with Zuzana and Begwe and arrange the post office for him and put it in order so it would work properly.

"The Doctor gave the king a cup of China tea"

After some persuasion the Doctor consented to this proposal feeling that perhaps he could do some good. Little did he realize what great labors and strange adventures he was taking upon himself as he got into the canoe with the King, Begwe and Zuzana to be paddled to the town of Fantippo.