Evening star., 1922-01-01

ters with stamps from perhaps 30 per
cent or more of all the post Offices at
which it is known the stamps were
used. New ones are occasionally be-
ing found, but it is believed there are
hundreds of post Offices at which these
stamps were sold that no proof of the
sale by stamps used from them has
been found.
THE present day reader may think
the railway post Office to be a
much more modern feature of the pos
tai service than history as reflected
through stamp collecting shows it to
be. Within a very short period after
the first locomotive was running upon
the first railway track in America
railway post Offices were being trans
ported from one city to another. The
Ackerman collection contains what is
believed to be the most complete col
lection of the 1S47 stamps used on
letters mailed in these railway post
offices. Many of the letters bear rail-
way post-marks of railroads whose
rames arc now forgotten. but prob
ably today the railway mail cars are
being drawn to and fro over the
same lines. Such names as Baltimore
and Ohio. Boston and Albany, Long
Island, Michigan Central and New
York and New Haven are familiar to
the present generation, but who other
than the historian or student Of
stamps has ever heard of the Albany
and Buffalo. Mad River and Lake Erie,
New York and Philadelphia, Vermont
and Massa chusetts, Wilmington and
Raleigh, the Hoosetonic, the Eastern.
the Concord and Montreal. the Balti-
more railroad, the Philadelphia rail-
road, the Washington railroad, the
New Haven and Greenfield, the Nor
wich and Worcester, the Providence
and Worcester and others that today
exist only as parts of the great sys-
tens of the country?
Even the steamboat mails had spe-
cial postmarks, sometimes consisting
merely of the word STEAM" but at
other times more elaborate, as in the
case of the Buffalo steamboat, the
Troy and New York steamboat and
the Hudson river mail.
The stamps in use from 1851 until
the outbreak Of the civil war are
strongly represented in the collection.
During this period the single rate OF
letter postage was cents and the
plates used for the Scent stamps con-
tain SO many slight variations in the
design that collection Of this COM
mon stamp showing variations in the
design or in the color of the ink
used and in the postmarks or cancel
lations with which it was obliterated
might easily total 5000 different spec
linens.
''Those TO whom stamps have no at
traction, to whom the love of stamps
| and Of collecting them is quite incom-
| prehensible, are prone to ask: What
| is there in stampsr or, There is moth
| ing in them,'" exclaimed Representa-
tive Ackerman. ''True, the colors of
, the rainbow or of the most beautiful
| sunset which the eye of man, has ever
seen are nothing to him who has no
sight, and if stamps are nothing more
| than bits of paper. then philately,
! which has been called the sport Of
kings and the king of sports is moth
! ing more than childish pastime. And
yet, is it childish to recognize in those
| bits Of paper the visible emblems Of
power of mighty governments? These
I bits Of paper sold for a few cents
placed within the hands of their pur-
| chasers the power to command the
fastest railway trains, the mighty
ships and in far distant corners of
the globe every known method of
transportation that the messages
which they carry may reach their des-
| tination. The widest oceans. the high
est mountains. the most terrible des-
| erts cannot daunt the postage stamp
lit conquers them all"