[Illustration: A fire bucket [1]]

[Footnote 1: Original in the Pennsylvania Historical Society.]

%190. The Fire Service.%--the ambulance, the steam fire engine, the
hose cart, the hook and ladder company, the police patrol, the police
officer on the street corner, the letter carrier gathering the mail, the
district messenger boy, the express company, the delivery wagon of the
stores, have all come in since Washington died. In his day the law
required every householder in the city to be a fireman. His name might
not appear on the rolls of any of the fire companies, he might not help
to drag through the streets the lumbering tank which served as a fire
engine, but he must have in his hall, or beneath the stairs, or hanging
up behind his shop door, at least one leathern bucket inscribed with his
name, and a huge bag of canvas or of duck. Then, if he were aroused at
the dead of night by the cry of fire and the clanging of every church
bell in the town, he seized this bucket and his bag, and, while his
wife put a lighted candle in the window to illuminate the street, set
off for the fire. The smoke or the flame was his guide, for the custom
of indicating the place by a number of strokes on a bell had not yet
come in. When at last he arrived at the scene he found there no idle
spectators. Every one was busy. Some hurried into the building and
filled their sacks with such movable goods as came nearest to hand. Some
joined the line that stretched away to the water, and helped to pass the
full buckets to those who stood by the fire. Others took posts in a
second line, down which the empty buckets were hastened to the pump. The
house would often be half consumed when the shouting made known that the
engine had come. It was merely a pump mounted over a tank. Into the tank
the water from the buckets was poured, and it was pumped thence by the
efforts of a dozen men.

[Illustration: Fire engine of 1800[1]]

[Footnote 1: From an old cut]

%191. The Post Office.%--Washington sees a great wagon or a white
trolley car marked United States Mail, and on inquiry is told that the
money now spent by the government each year for the support of the post
offices would have more than paid the national debt when he was
President. He hears with amazement that there are now 75,000 post
offices, and recalls that in 1790 there were but seventy-five. He picks
up from the sidewalk a piece of paper with a little pink something on
the corner. H