The first daily paper, called The Federal Orrery, was issued three hundred years after Columbus discovered America. It was not popular, and killed off the news-boys who tried to call it on the streets: so it perished.
There was a public library in New York, from which books were loaned at fourpence ha'penny per week. New York thus became very early the seat of learning, and soon afterwards began to abuse the site where Chicago now stands.
Travel was slow, the people went on horseback or afoot, and when they could go by boat it was regarded as a success. Wagons finally made the trip from New York to Philadelphia in the wild time of forty-eight hours, and the line was called The Flying Dutchman, or some other euphonious name. Benjamin Franklin, whose biography occurs in Chapter XV., was then Postmaster-General.
He was the first bald-headed man of any prominence in the history of America. He and his daughter Sally took a trip in a chaise, looking over the entire system, and going to all offices. Nothing pleased the Postmaster-General like quietly slipping into a place like Sandy Bottom and catching the postmaster reading over the postal cards and committing them to memory.
Calfskin shoes up to the Revolution were the exclusive property of the gentry, and the rest wore cowhide and were extremely glad to mend them themselves. These were greased every week with tallow, and could be worn on either foot with impunity. Rights and lefts were never thought of until after the Revolutionary War, but to-day the American shoe is the most symmetrical, comfortable, and satisfactory shoe made in the world.
The British shoe is said to be more comfortable. Possibly for a British foot it is so, but for a foot containing no breathing-apparatus or viscera it is somewhat roomy and clumsy.