the general orders are revised almost daily, informing the clerks of
changes affecting the distribution, and also instructions as to other
duties. From the schemes mentioned, lists of distribution are made and
time computed applicable to each line or train of the States for which
mail is selected.

To return from this preliminary digression to the examinations. These
examinations are of the most practical character and serve to develop
the mental abilities and intelligent understanding of the clerks. To
clearly understand the method, the clerk should be followed step by step
from the time of his probationary appointment into the service, through
the probationary period and his examinations as a full-fledged clerk.
After a month's service on a line, the clerk is assigned a day and hour
for his examination; here is laid the foundation for future usefulness,
the intelligent understanding of a service, acquired by continual study
and inquiry, that gives to all occupations that peculiar zest when
understandingly rather than mechanically followed. A single State, with
the least number of offices, that in the course of duty he will be
required to assort, is selected at the first; it is not expected that it
will be memorized understandingly, or the location of each office fully
known at once, but it forms the basis of inquiry, and develops either
future excellence or mediocrity, or total incapacity. The room in which
these examinations are usually conducted (excepting when a clerk on a
route in a remote part of the division is the subject, in which case he
is visited by the examining clerk) is kept quiet, and nothing that will
distract the attention allowed. He is placed before a case containing
one hundred pigeon-holes, or more, each the width of an ordinary
visiting-card, and sufficiently high to contain a large pack of them.
Cards are then produced, upon each one of which is printed the name of a
post-office, comprising a whole State. The cards are distributed into