The Canadian post office lost a collector’s rare Alexander Pope poetry book, so they offered him some stamps for the loss, reports the Montreal Gazette.

The article says of the poet, “Alexander Pope survived being trampled by a cow and overcame tuberculosis of the spine to become ‘the defining poetic force of his age’.” Many a postal customer can profit from that lesson in fortitude. Indeed, it will be the only profit seen by those of us on the U.S. side of the border – no free stamps accompany the shredded bits of our fanzines that show up in those plastic baggies marked “Destroyed in handling by the US Postal Service.”

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the link.]