in Great Britain this is replaced by a profit. As regards post-office
progress in the United States, the question is rather an abstract one;
for there is not the least probability of an advance in rates. The
discrepancy between receipts and expenses will be attacked rather
by seeking to reduce the latter at the same time that the former
are enhanced by natural growth and by improvement in the details of
service and administration.

[Illustration: PROF. S.F.B. MORSE, THE INVENTOR OF THE
ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.]

Difficult as it is adequately to state or to measure the extension of
the mails within the century, it is far from telling the whole
story of the amplitude and celerity with which the people of our day
interchange intelligence.

Only to the last third of the period under review has the electric
telegraph been known. It is now a necessity of the public and private
life of every civilized spot upon the globe. It traverses all lands
and all seas. The forty miles of wire with which it started from
Washington City have become many millions. Its length of line in the
United States is about the same with that of the mail-routes, and a
similar equality probably obtains in other parts of the world. We have
nearly as much line as all Europe together, though the extent of wire
may not be so great. It is little to say that this continent, so
dim to the founders of the Union, has been by the invention of Morse
compressed within whispering distance, the same advantage having been
conferred on other countries. It is the property of mankind, and
the comparison must be between present and past, not between any two
countries of the present. Strictly, a comparison is not possible,