India, Oct. 12 -- Hard to believe. But turns out that there were parents in 1913 who did not hesitate to entrust their babies to Parcel Post's canvas bags, and babies did reach their grandmothers through this route. Until, of course, the postmaster finally gave an official decree that this won't do.

The bag keeps changing. The baby, too, keeps looking at new hands and faces. If there is a parent in the 1900s putting a baby in a post-bag, there is a Postman James G. Todd walking with the Hope Diamond in its brown paper package to be delivered to the Smithsonian institution. If there are heavy bricks being transported to a bank's construction-site in Vernal (Utah) in the 1910s via a post-office, there is W. Reginald Bray- The Autograph Kin...