ashed in by the mail coaches unable to make quickly
enough the sharp turn to the right or the left in the narrow street.

The arrangements for mailing and receiving letters in Paris are, in
general, very satisfactory,--the branch post-offices are over a hundred
in number, and they will receive not only letters and mailable packages,
but telegrams. They do a very large business, and are generally thronged
all day in the popular quarters,--the registry department being greatly
in favor. At night, they are recognizable by their blue lanterns, and
there are also, since 1894, auxiliary offices in certain shops
designated by blue signs. The letter-boxes, set in the wall of the
building, so that letters and packages may be mailed from the street,
are usually four in number, one each for Paris, the departments, foreign
mail, and for printed matter. Stamps may be bought and letters mailed
also in very many of the small tobacco-shops, in public buildings, and
in the depots of the railways and the tramways of the suburbs. There are
eight collections and distributions a day, on work-days, and five on
Sundays and fete-days; the facteur, or carrier, has discharged his duty
when he has left the mail with the concierge of the building, and its
final delivery rests entirely with the latter functionary. These
facteurs, who are generally intelligent and conscientious, wear the
inevitable uniform of all French officials, and carry their mail in an
absurd stiff little leathern box, suspended in front of their stomachs
by a strap around their necks. Their distributing matter never seems to
exceed the capacity of this box,--ranging in quantity from a third to a
tenth of the ordinary burden of a New York letter-carrier.

A more rapid method of distribution, for which a higher rate is charged,
is by means of the pneumatic tubes which traverse the city, mostly
through the egouts, and which have their termini in the branch
post-offices. Envelopes or enclosures sent by this medium must contain
neither valuable objects nor hard and resisting bodies. The service of
_colis postaux_, so called although there is no necessary connection
with the post, and which corresponds nearly with the American express
system, is, for Paris, in the hands of a director to whom it is a
concession by the Administration des Postes, and for the departments and
the colonies in those of the railway companies and the subsidized
maritime companies. The inevitable conflict wit