%191.  The Post Office.%—­Washington sees a great wagon or a white trolley car marked United States Mail, and on inquiry is told that the money now spent by the government each year for the support of the post offices would have more than paid the national debt when he was President.  He hears with amazement that there are now 75,000 post offices, and recalls that in 1790 there were but seventy-five.  He picks up from the sidewalk a piece of paper with a little pink something on the corner.  He is told that the portrait on it is his own, that it is a postage stamp, that it costs two cents, and will carry a letter to San Francisco, a city he never heard of, and, if the person to whom it is addressed cannot be found, will bring the letter back to the sender, a distance of over 5000 miles.  In his day a letter was a single sheet of paper, no matter how large or small, and the postage on it was determined not by weight, but by distance, and might be anything from six to twenty-five cents.

At that time postage must always be prepaid, and as the post office must support itself, letters were not sent from the country towns till enough postage had been deposited at the post office to pay the expense of sending them.  Newspapers and books could not be sent by mail.

%192.  The Franchise.%—­Taking the country through, the condition of the people was by no means so happy as ours.  They had government of the people, but it was not by the people nor for the people.  Everywhere the right to vote and to hold office was greatly restricted.  The voter must have an estate worth a certain sum, or a specified number of acres, or an annual income of so many dollars.  But the right to vote did not carry with it the right to hold office.  More property was required for office holding than for voting, and there were besides certain religious restrictions.  In New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, the governor, the members of the legislature, and the chief officers of state must be Protestants.  In Massachusetts and Maryland they must be Christians.  All these restrictions were long since swept away.

%193.  Cruel Punishments.%—­The humane spirit of our times was largely wanting.  The debtor was cast into prison.  The pauper might be sold to the highest bidder.  The criminal was dragged out into open day and flogged or branded.  From ten to nineteen crimes were punishable with death.  No such thing as a lunatic asylum, or a deaf and dumb asylum, or a penitentiary existed.  The prisons were dreadful places.  Men came out of them worse than they went in.

%194.  The Condition of the Laborer; of the well to do.%—­Men worked harder and for less money then than now.  A regular working day was from sunrise to sunset, with an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner.  Sometimes the laborer was fed and lodged by the employer, in which case he was paid four dollars a month in winter and six in summer.  Two shillings (30 cents) a day for unskilled labor was thought high wages.