e is told that the portrait on it is his own, that it is a
postage stamp, that it costs two cents, and will carry a letter to San
Francisco, a city he never heard of, and, if the person to whom it is
addressed cannot be found, will bring the letter back to the sender, a
distance of over 5000 miles. In his day a letter was a single sheet of
paper, no matter how large or small, and the postage on it was
determined not by weight, but by distance, and might be anything from
six to twenty-five cents.

At that time postage must always be prepaid, and as the post office must
support itself, letters were not sent from the country towns till enough
postage had been deposited at the post office to pay the expense of
sending them. Newspapers and books could not be sent by mail.

%192. The Franchise.%--Taking the country through, the condition of
the people was by no means so happy as ours. They had government of the
people, but it was not by the people nor for the people. Everywhere the
right to vote and to hold office was greatly restricted. The voter must
have an estate worth a certain sum, or a specified number of acres, or
an annual income of so many dollars. But the right to vote did not carry
with it the right to hold office. More property was required for office
holding than for voting, and there were besides certain religious
restrictions. In New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, South
Carolina, and Georgia, the governor, the members of the legislature, and
the chief officers of state must be Protestants. In Massachusetts and
Maryland they must be Christians. All these restrictions were long since
swept away.

%193. Cruel Punishments.%--The humane spirit of our times was largely
wanting. The debtor was cast into prison. The pauper might be sold to
the highest bidder. The criminal was dragged out into open day and
flogged or branded. From ten to nineteen crimes were punishable with
death. No such thing as a lunatic asylum, or a deaf and dumb asylum, or
a penitentiary existed. The prisons were dreadful places. Men came out
of them worse than they went in.

%194. The Condition of the Laborer; of the well to do.%--Men worked
harder and for less money then than now. A regular working day was from
sunrise to sunset, with an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner.
Sometimes the laborer was fed and lodged by the employer, in which case
he was paid four dollars a month in winter and six in summer. Two
shillings (30 cent