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First among these factors I would set the American postal laws, an essential feature of which is the extraordinarily low rates at which periodical literature may be transmitted. A magazine which may be sent to any place in the United States for from an eighth of a penny to a farthing, according to its weight, will cost for postage in England from two-pence-halfpenny to fourpence.
In this relation I may be permitted to express my sense of the fitness of an international agreement whereby the interchange of messages over connecting cables may be regulated on a fair basis of uniformity. The world has seen the postal system developed from a congeries of independent and exclusive services into a well-ordered union, of which all countries enjoy the manifold benefits.
There is an old claim for postal services rendered many years ago, which has reposed in the catacombs of one of the departments. The claimant has long been dead, and it was purchased for a small sum from his heirs.
He had one of those impossible pocket-diaries, the first half dozen pages loaded with information of every kind printed in blinding type, postal rates to every country in the world, statistics as to population and rates of death, weights and measures, the highest mountains in the world, the greatest depths of the ocean.
Yet the postal authorities believed that this would be more than offset by the southerly course being to a great extent free from winter snows. On September 15, 1858, after elaborate preparations, the overland mails started from San Francisco and St. Louis on the twenty-five day schedule which was three days less than that of the water route.
Stephan, the inventor of the postal card and the chief promoter of the International Postal Union. His is the "power behind the throne" which has made the German postal system a marvel of efficiency, unsurpassed, if not unrivalled, in the world. Less known to travellers than many others far inferior in interest, is the Hohenzollern Museum, occupying the Monbijou Palace in the heart of Berlin.
After two months' acquaintance with the narrow quarters of a yacht there was something odd and agreeable in spacious halls and staircases. Especially agreeable was my bedroom, equipped with a great, hospitable writing table, on which a pile of letters and postal packets was awaiting me.
But Floppy got safely home with the other stocking and the cake of chocolate and nothing else happened that night, except that Mrs. Twistytail sent the kind mouse a souvenir postal inviting him to come to the Christmas dinner.
An international postal congress was convened in Berne, Switzerland, in September last, at which the United States was represented by an officer of the Post-Office Department of much experience and of qualification for the position.
Ship subsidies are in various forms: premiums on construction of vessels; navigation bounties; trade bounties; fishing bounties; postal subsidies for the carriage of ocean mails; naval subventions; Government loans on low rates of interest.
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