“Benjamin  |
and       |  Franklin”
Deborah   |

I counted 27 cannons (6 pounders) planted in the edge of the sidewalk in Water St. the other day.  They are driven into the ground, about a foot, with the mouth end upwards.  A ball is driven fast into the mouth of each, to exclude the water; they look like so many posts.  They were put there during the war.  I have also seen them planted in this manner, round the old churches, in N. Y.....

There is one fine custom observed in Phila.  A gentleman is always expected to hand up a lady’s money for her.  Yesterday, I sat in the front end of the ’bus, directly under the driver’s box—­a lady sat opposite me.  She handed me her money, which was right.  But, Lord! a St. Louis lady would think herself ruined, if she should be so familiar with a stranger.  In St. Louis a man will sit in the front end of the stage, and see a lady stagger from the far end, to pay her fare.  The Phila. ’bus drivers cannot cheat.  In the front of the stage is a thing like an office clock, with figures from 0 to 40, marked on its face.  When the stage starts, the hand of the clock is turned toward the 0.  When you get in and pay your fare, the driver strikes a bell, and the hand moves to the figure 1—­that is, “one fare, and paid for,” and there is your receipt, as good as if you had it in your pocket.  When a passenger pays his fare and the driver does not strike the bell immediately, he is greeted “Strike that bell! will you?”

I must close now.  I intend visiting the Navy Yard, Mint, etc., before I write again.  You must write often.  You see I have nothing to write interesting to you, while you can write nothing that will not interest me.  Don’t say my letters are not long enough.  Tell Jim Wolfe to write.  Tell all the boys where I am, and to write.  Jim Robinson, particularly.  I wrote to him from N. Y. Tell me all that is going on in H—­l. 
                                   Truly your brother
          
                                             Sam.

Those were primitive times.  Imagine a passenger in these easy-going days calling to a driver or conductor to “Strike that bell!”

“H—­l” is his abbreviation for Hannibal.  He had first used it in a title of a poem which a few years before, during one of Orion’s absences, he had published in the paper.  “To Mary in Hannibal” was too long to set as a display head in single column.  The poem had no great merit, but under the abbreviated title it could hardly fail to invite notice.  It was one of several things he did to liven up the circulation during a brief period of his authority.

The doubtful money he mentions was the paper issued by private banks, “wild cat,” as it was called.  He had been paid with it in New York, and found it usually at a discount—­sometimes even worthless.  Wages and money were both better in Philadelphia, but the fund for his mother’s trip to Kentucky apparently did not grow very rapidly.