fast mail train from New York City at Albany, through Syracuse,
Rochester, and Buffalo, reaches Cleveland at 6.00 P.M., Tuesday, and
Chicago at 6.00 A.M., Wednesday, where an intermission of six hours
makes the longest delay in the line of connection. The next morning,
Thursday, at 11. A.M., Omaha is reached; Friday, at 6.00 P.M., Laramie,
Wyoming; Saturday, at 6.00 P.M., Ogden, Utah; Sunday, Humboldt, Nevada;
and Monday, at 11.00 A.M., San Francisco. This illustration has been
made to show the far-reaching continuity of connecting lines across the
country, passing through many of the principal cities but not entering a
post-office for distribution, rather than a complexity of connections
almost innumerable in a thickly-settled country, and over which study
and patient inquiry to simplify are ever at work.

Lyons, Wayne County, New York, is located on the New York Central
Railway; a letter is started from that place for Leeds, Franklin County,
Massachusetts; it is received into the New York and Chicago railway
post-office at 8.17 A.M., then it is given to the Boston and Albany
railway post-office at Albany, the latter line connecting at Westfield,
Massachusetts, with the Williamsburgh and New Haven railway post-office,
arriving at destination at 9.37 that night.

Again at 6.08 P.M., from Lyons, another New York and Chicago railway
post-office train passes, but, owing to different connections, disposes
of it differently: from this railway post-office a pouch containing a
similarly addressed letter, with other mail, is delivered at Albany for
the Boston and Albany railway post-office, due to leave Springfield,
Massachusetts, at 7.15 A.M.; this pouch is conveyed from Albany in the
baggage-car attached to an express-train, which train, passing
Westfield, connects at Springfield with the 7.15 A.M. railway
post-office train East. At Palmer a short distance east of Springfield a