Mr Chevenix's library

'It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chevenix's shop, and it is the prettiest bauble you ever saw.
…..the Chevenix's have tricked it out for themselves; up two pair of stairs is what they call Mr. Chevenix's library, furnished with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope without any glasses. ...

….For the rest of the house, I could send it to you in this letter as easily as the drawing, only that I should have nowhere to live till the return of the post."

Letters  Horace Walpole to Horace Mann,  June1747

Pigeon S.O.S

"The little boat swung round, headed into the wind, and stopped at their feet.  Roger knelt on the pier and grabbed her.
'Jolly well done,' he said.  'Hullo. You've got another pigeon.'
'Hop aboard,'  said Peggy. 'And hang on to the pier.  We've got to send her off with a message.  What's the time?'
'My watch is bust,' said Roger. 'It always is.'
'Fourteen minutes past seven,'  said Dick.
Peggy was scribbling on a piece of paper.  She rolled it up tight, opened another wicker basket like the one that had been sent to meet them, and brought out a pigeon. 'Come on,' she said.  'You slip the despatch under the ring …the rubber one.'

The pigeon had a metal ring on one leg and rubber one on the other.  Titty, with trembling fingers, trembling for fear of doing it wrong and making the pigeon uncomfortable, slipped in the tiny roll of paper.
'Off you go,' said Peggy, and the pigeon was circling above their heads, above the yachts in the bay, and was suddenly flying straight as an arrow for the distant promontory.
'Cast off,' cried Peggy,  and in another moment they had left the pier, and with a fair wind to help them were sailing up the lake after the pigeon."

Pigeon Post  Arthur Ransome