at a loss why his 'communications are not noticed'" that "this is rather unaccountable, when we have given notice, not less than ten different times, that no notice will be taken of any Query, &c., unless a solution accompany it, Post Paid! Nobody worries about postage to-day, and, though we all know that it cost more to send letters in old times, few of us have the details in mind. They were complicated and must have been pretty vexatious. The Almanac furnishes all necessary information on the subject. Thus in 1798 we have this table: Rate of POSTAGE of every single Letter by land. No allowance is to be made for intermediate miles. Every double letter is to pay double the said rates; every triple letter, triple; every packet weighing one ounce, at the rate of four single letters for each ounce. In 1800 there is a different table, and the postage on short distances is increased: Every Letter composed of two pieces of paper, double those rates. Every Letter composed of three pieces of paper, triple those rates. Every Letter composed of four pieces of paper, and weighing one ounce, quadruple those rates; and at the rate of four single letters for each ounce any letter or packet may weigh. Until 1816, this table, with a few changes, is printed nearly every year; in 1816, however, the rates take a considerable jump: RATE OF POSTAGE OF EVERY SINGLE LETTER BY LAND. No allowance is to be made for intermediate miles. Every double letter is to pay double the said rates; every triple letter, triple; every packet weighing one ounce, at the rate of four single letters for each ounce. Every ship letter originally received at an office for delivery 9 cents. Magazines and pamphlets, not over 50 miles 1 1-2 ct. per sheet. Over 50 miles, and not exceeding 100 do. 2 1-4 cts. Over 100 do. 3 cts. In 1817 the minimum rate settles back to six cents. for thirty miles, which continued till July 1, 1845, when a new law went into effect, fixing the rate at five cents for three hundred miles, the weight not to exceed half an ounce. Single postage was added for each additional half ounce or fraction thereof. The other provisions of the new law need not detain us. An abstract was furnished by the Almanac for 1846. The three-cent rate was adopted in 1851 for any distance under three thousand miles, for more than that distance six cents was charged. In 1863 three cents became the rate without regard to distance, and in 1883 two cents. The maximum weight for a single postage was increased to one ounce in 1885. The history of American postage from 1793 may be followed in the successive issues of the Almanac. Here, as well as anywhere, may be appended a table which contains many novelties for the schoolboy of today, but which all New Englanders of forty will recognize as embodying much information once vitally necessary in making change. It is taken from the Almanac for 1797: The Value of the several Pieces of Silver Coin now in Circulation in the United States, in Federal Currency. Similar tables, and others more complicated, appear in the Almanac for many years. In particular there is the regular schedule of the values of the shilling in various parts of the country. Instead of reprinting it, we may quote a passage from the autobiography of Lieutenant John Harriott, an English half-pay officer, who knew America well: The various currencies of money, in the different states, are troublesome and harassing even to the natives of the United States, and still more so to strangers. A dollar, in sterling money, is four shillings and six pence; but, in the New-England states, the currency is six shillings to a dollar; in New-York, eight shillings; in New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, seven shillings and six pence; in Virginia, six shillings; in North Carolina, eight shillings; and, in South Carolina and Georgia, four shillings and eight pence. All agree that the evil is great and wants to be remedied; but they say, such is the prejudice of the countrypeople in the different states in favour of the currency they have always been accustomed to, that it is feared, were an act of congress passed to enforce a general uniform currency, the country-people would consider it as bad as they formerly did the stamp-act. To this, I have frequently taken the liberty of observing, to several members of congress and others, that, if an act were passed for no book-debt, bond, note, bill, &c. to be admitted as evidence in their courts of law, except such as were kept or made in dollars and cents, (which all the public offices and banks already do,) the evil would soon be removed without other coercion than that of self-interest.1 Most of us can remember when the shilling of 163 cents, the ninepence, two and thrippence, fo'pence ha'penny, and two shillings were terms constantly used in making small trades. To the rising generation these terms have merely an historical significance. 1 Struggles through Life, London, 1807, II, 29-30. F ASTROLOGY ROM the outset Mr. Thomas kept his Almanac free from astrology. This was not so hard to do in 1793 as it would have been seventy-five years earlier, but it was nevertheless a sufficiently creditable feat. The false science of the stars is so nearly obsolete nowadays among intelligent people that one finds it hard to realize what a hold it had upon the popular mind in the eighteenth century and even later. But an example or two will conduct us back to an age when the stars in their courses were regarded as potent in all human affairs, and we may well be surprised to see how short, both in time and in space, is the journey that we have to go. About the middle of the eighteenth century, it was customary, in some parts of New England, to employ an astrologer to cast a horoscope in order to determine the exact day and hour at which a vessel should weigh anchor for an important voyage. This seems to have been particularly common in the case of slavers, perhaps on account of the great possibilities of profit and the peculiar risks which their traffic involved. Mr. George C. Mason, of Newport, whose extremely interesting account of the colonial slave-trade1 gives a multitude of details drawn from original business papers, had seen hundreds of these horoscopes" and prints a facsimile of one dated August 22, 1752, and prepared for a voyage to the Guinea coast. 1 The African Slave Trade in Colonial Times, in The American Historical Record, 1872, I, 311-19, 338-45. |