xplained that it was only the letter-carrier; and,
sure enough, when the servant came into the room she picked up three or
four letters from the floor. The postman was somehow able to reach the
front window from the "stoop," open it, and throw in the evening's
mail--a primitive arrangement, more suggestive of the English than of
the American Gotham. Even the gum on the United States postage-stamps
is apt to be ineffectual. When you are stamping letters in hot haste
to catch the European mail, you are as likely as not to find that
the head of President Grant has curled up and refuses--most
uncharacteristically--to stick to its post.

The conveniences of the express system, again, are, in my judgment,
greatly overrated. It is often slow and always expensive. It seems to
have been devised by the makers of Saratoga trunks, for it puts a
premium upon huge packages and a tax upon those of moderate size. I
speak feelingly, for I have just paid, eight shillings for the
conveyance of five packages from my room to the wharf, a distance of
about a mile and a half. A London growler would have taken them and
myself to boot for eighteenpence, three of the packages going outside,
and two, with their owner, inside. It is true that had I packed all my
belongings in one huge box the same company would have conveyed them to
the steamer for one and eightpence, which is the regular charge per
package. But I could not have taken this box into my state-room; I must
in any case have had a cabin trunk; and for an ocean voyage, a bundle of
rugs is, to say the least of it, advisable. Thus I could not have
escaped paying four and tenpence for the conveyance of my baggage
alone--rather more than three times as much as it would have cost to
convey my baggage and myself the same distance in London. It must not be
forgotten, of course, that the New York Express Company would, if
necessary, have carried the goods much further for the same charge of
forty cents a package. The limit of distance I do not know: it is
probably something like twenty miles. But a potential ell does not
reconcile me to paying an exorbitant price for the actual inch which is
all I have any use for. This method of simplification--fixing the
minimum payment on the basis of the maximum bulk, weight, and
distance--seems to me essentially irrational. In some cases, indeed, it
cuts against the Express Company. When I first had occasion to move from
one abode to another in New York--a