The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1902-04-03

and said: You are mighty little to
carry bundles, but L would like for you
to take a couple Of pairs of socks and
bring me back the pay in coffee if you .
will. Ill give you a little bag to put
IL in and you a hang it on to the
saddle" OF course l did, for always
liked to oblige the women, and besides
my father kept a store and got the
trade. Sometimes 1 had as much out
side of the mail bag as there was in
side. L made fourteen silver dollars
that winter and felt rich.
But | want to tell you about the
mail business as it was then. There
were no stamps or stamped envelopes
We wrote on a long paper called fools
cap. Ii got that name from the water
mark which was a FOOLS cap and bells
stamped on the paper. After writing
we could fold the sheet up to the
size of a letter and slip m fold in the
other thumb paper 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 postage
was paid at the end of the line by the
II who received the letter. 1t was
II 1-2 cents if it did not come or go
outside of the State-1S ga If from or
to an adjoining State and rs cents if
still further off. But if 1t was t. go to
California il had to be prepaid and sent
by Wells and FarSo's express and cost
a dollar and was a month on the way.
Just think of IT,. Now 1t costs only
two cents and takes only four days.
That overland express almost made
us boys carry. They published a book
called Ten Years Among the Mail
Bags" and it had pictures in it-pic-
lures Of the boys riding tho mail on
Indian ponies-rlding on a run of ten
miles in an hour, and then he was
lifted off of his pony and put OH 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 day-twenty cast and
twenty west. Ii took about two hun
dred boys and four hundred ponies to
do the work and L wanted TO be ope Of
the boys mighty bad. Part of the
route was beset by hostile Indians and
the express company had to keep
soldiers at these stations to guard the
ponies, and the boys had to keep "a
sharp lookout between the stations.
One of the pictures showed some In
dams shooting at a boy as he bent over
on the pony's neck and was flying like
the wind. He had left the track and
taken r%Oundance on them, and L
thought that was heroic.
The letters were limited 10 a single
sheet of paper and a thousand to a bag
and that made about twenty pounds of
mail. Besides the mail there were
some Lwo-pOny hacks with two drivers
and guns and these carried gold dust
from the mines to the Eastern States
and were limited to two hundred
pounds, which was worth nearly $780,
600 and was a tempting prize to both
white and Indian robbers. But the
gold express ran at irregular intervals
and nobody knew when it was 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 25 cents
to Is 3D. or IL 1-2 cents for it. The
next one the writer would send would
not be taken out and would 90
TO Washington as a dead letter. L
reckon you wonder why the postage
was in such curious amounts. Well,
we didn't have any decimal currency
then-no dimes or half dimes. The
dollar was divided into sixteen parts
instead of twenty; N part was called
a thrlp, which was 6 Id cents. Thrip
is an a~bbreviation for threepence. Two
parts was called a sevenpence and it's
value was IL 1-2 cents. / don't be-
lieve L have seen q thrip or a seven
pence in fifty years. The government
called them all in and issued dimes and
half dimes instead.
In Illuminating about the wonderful
change in u postal laws since l was
a boy l am prepared to say that moth
ing that has been discovered or in
vented has wrought such beneficial re-
suits and so much comfort to the peo-
pie. What pleasure at home is more
valued than the reception of letters
from kindred and friends who are far
away? Postage is only one-tenth what
it used to be, but there are twenty
times as many letters written by every
person who can write and there are ten
'ihioo 40 many W WTlI6 tnem. Inc
great Northern mail used to come to
our town once a week and a single sack
in the boot of a stage contained it.
Now five times that quantity comes
twice a day. L used to write about two
letters a week and now 1 write twenty
five or thirty and receive more than 1
write. Fol- 1 have quit answering
many letters that inclose no stamp.
The number of letters increases faster
than the postage decreases. When
the postage had TO be paid at the end
of the line 1t was pretty hard to receive
a disagreeable letter and have to paw
for it. My father was a merchant for
nearly fifty years and sold goods on a
years time, and sometimes we had to
write dunning letters to his customers.
He wrote to a very slow man and
got no answer, so he wrote another and
the slow man wrote back that he would
have to wait until he made another
crop, and as postage was high and silver
was scarce, he advised q very limited
correspondence. He wrote another to
o belated customer at Warsaw and
another and another and then got q
reply which said:
81 have received your letters, but
they Were o long time on the way. If
you had sent them round by Atlanta