lberg, and many others in South Germany, to the modern edifices
which adorn, and yet seem strangely out of keeping with, the
picturesque old North German towns. These models are miniature copies
of the exteriors of post-office buildings, varying in length from one
and a half to six or eight feet, and of corresponding height. One most
interesting model shows the interior of a modern post-office, each
floor showing an exact copy of its department of the service, with
all appliances and conveniences.

In another room are miniature mail-coaches of different kinds. In the
centre of this apartment stands a life-size figure of a mail-carrier
in Germany of four hundred years ago. He is a wild-looking official,
reminding one by his bronzed features and general appearance of some
trusty Indian scout, as he holds his gun in an attitude of suspicion
and menace, while a bear-cub opens a capacious mouth at his feet.

Model mail and post-office cars occupy the side of another large room;
but this exhibit is so vast and varied that the memory refuses to
retain its classification, and holds side by side Alaskan sledges
drawn by dogs, Russian post-chaises with reindeer teams, mail-boats on
Norwegian fiords, carrier-pigeons and balloons, camels and elephants,
and the model mail-coach of the lightning express of the New York
Central Railroad. The working appliance used in America for catching
off a mail-bag without stopping the train attracts much attention.
There is a complete set of the weights and measures used in British
post-offices, and two glass cases show the forms of horseshoes best
adapted to the speed of horses carrying mails. Tablets, pens, and
pencils have cases to themselves, as well as parchments, ancient rolls
and ink-horns, reeds and papyrus. Here are the primitive postal
arrangements of some of the East Indies; there is the yellow satin
missive with a scarlet seal which carries the royal mandates of Siam.
Pictures and models of mail-carrying elephants come next, their gay
saddle-cloths filled with pockets and parchment rolls. A model of a
Japanese post-office is finished in all its interior with the
perfection of detail and delicacy of execution which characterize the
best Japanese work. A framed engraving of the International Postal
Congress at Berne in 1874 hangs near one of the Congress at Paris in
1878. There is a room devoted to the exhibition of postal stamps,
cards, and envelopes of every kind, and there are sever