The free press. (Poplarville, Miss.) 1890-19??, 1902-04-03
Barlow Man Tells of His Expert
enoe as a Mail Carrier.
GREAT CHANGES HAVE BEEN WROUGHT
Postage in the Old Days Was Much
Higher Than Now-Receivers
of Letters Were the Ones
Who Paid.

story about the old times. Sixty
yeas old, my father was the postmas-
ter in cur town and had to make con-
tracts for carrying the mail to other
neighboring towns. He gave these
contracts to needy men and the pay
was generally ore dollar a day One
of these men got sick and my father
made me take his place and ride the
mail to Roswell all winter. 1t was
twenty miles away, and l had to
ride there and back in a day, and he
paid me the dollar for every trip. 1t
was bitter winter and sometimes
when | Iot home I had to be helped
off of the horse, for | was frozen up
and helpless. But | was a tough and
hardy boy and always ready for the
next trip. On my first ride the good
old women on the route did not know
me. They used to knit socks and send
them to town by the old man to sell
and carry back some coffee or sugar
or indigo, or copperas, or some little
thing, but they didn't know re, and l
remember that one old woman came
out to the gate and said: Are you the
mail boy?" And l laughed and said:
Yes, nam, am not the female boy"
She smiled and said: you are mighty
little to carry bundles, but l would
like for you to take couple of pairs
of socks and bring me back the pay
in w criU n
little bag to put it in, and you can
hang it on the horn of your saddle"
OF course l did, for | always liked to
oblige the women, and besides my
father kept a store and got the trade.
Some times I had as much outside of
the mailbag as there was inside. l
made fourteen silver dollars that win
ter and felt rich.
But want to tell you about the mail
business aus it was then. There were
no stamps or stamped envelopes-nor
any other kind of envelopes. We
wrote on a long paper called foolscap.
It got that name from the watermark,
which was a fools cap and bells
stamped on the paper. After writing
We could fold the sheet up to the size
Of letter and slip one fold in the
observation-disclosures Fashion - then
seal it with a wafer and address it.
The waters were round and thin, and
were made Of flour paste, and when
held on the tongue a moment got soft
and sticky. In MY young days the
osd ct of
line by the one who received the let
ter 1t was u IL cents if it did not
come or go outside the State-18 "a
if from or to an adjoining State, and
25 cents of still farther off. But if
it was to go to California, it had to
be prepaid and sent by Wells and
Fargos express and cost a dollar, and
was a month en- the way. Just think
of it. Now it costs only two cents and
takes only four days. That overland
express almost made us boys crazy.
They published a book called "Ten
Years Among the Mail Bags" and it
had pictures in it-pictures of the
boys riding the mail on Indian ponies
riding on a run of ten miles in an
hour, and then he was lifted off of
his pony and put on a fresh one for
another ten miles. The boys had to
weigh not less than sixty nor over
ninety pounds and had to make forty
miles a Gay-20 east and 20 west. II
took about two hundred boys and foul
hundred ponies to do the work, and
T h. af iOb ~
bad. Part Of the route was beset by
hostile Indians, and the express COM
paay had to keep soldiers at these sta
lions to guard the ponies, and the boys
had to keep a sharp lookout between
the stations. One of the pictures
showed some Indians shooting at
boy as I've bent over the pony's neck,
and was flying like the wind. He had
left the track and taken roundance on
them and thought that was heroic.
The letters were limited to a single
sheet CT paper and a thousand in a
bag, ard that made about twenty
pounds of mail. Besides the mail
there were some two-pony hacks with
two drivers and guns and these car
ried gold dust from the mines to the
eastern states and were limited to
two hundred pounds, which was worth
nearly $4,000 and was tempting
prize to both white and Indian rob-
bers. But the gold express ran at
irregular intervals and nobody knew
,x,bio,, coming
But now about postage Not many
foolish letters were written in those
days. 1t cost too much and made the
man mad when he had to pay 20 cents
or 10 "a or IL IL cents for 1t. Ihe
next one the writer would send would
not be taken out and would go to
Washington as dead letter. | recon
you wonder why the postage was in
such curious amounts. Well, we didn't
have any decimal currency then-no
dime< or half dimes The dollar was
| divided into sixteen parts instead OF