of dawn; but we realize the substance of our surroundings when we again
turn our attention to the busy scene in the car. The city distribution
of letters--a feature of the service on night-trains which has greatly
facilitated the early delivery of mails in a few of the larger
cities--has been extended to other cities, and others are still to
receive its benefit. For instance, clerks from the Boston post-office
detailed to do this duty enter the mail-car at the Boston and Albany
Railway at Springfield, Massachusetts, and sort the city letters by
carriers' routes, post-office box sections, banks, insurance offices,
etc. The corresponding train moving in the opposite direction is boarded
by New York post-office clerks making similar separations.

The packages of letters thus made up go direct to their respective
divisions in the post-office, thereby avoiding the delay that would be
caused in passing through other preliminary distributing departments.
This work has been taken up recently by the Railway Mail Service, the
plan enlarged and extended, and added to the other duties of the clerks.
Additional clerks, however, have been employed to perform this work, yet
the others are required to know it, and on lines where additional clerks
were not appointed, to make it their regular duty.

A glance has been given at one of the many links in the continuous
chains of connections that cross and recross the face of the country. A
comparison of the oldtime method and of the railway post-office service
will show the superior advantage of the latter. At some remote hamlet in
Nova Scotia, a letter is started for San Francisco, California. It
crosses the boundary line into the United States and enters at once the
swelling current at Vanceborough, Maine. Leaving that place at 1.35
A.M., Monday, without delay it reaches Boston at 5.10 P.M., is
transferred across the city, leaves at 6.00 P.M., connecting with the