ral cheerfulness and love of fun himself, he sometimes forgot the loneliness of his journey as he encountered humanity in its most amusing aspects, at the stoppingplaces on his route.

"At one point," writes our informant, "the office was kept in a low, log bar-room, where, after the contents of the mail-pouch were emptied on the unswept floor, all the inmates gave slow and repeated motion to each respective paper and letter."

Sometimes the mail-boy, finding no one at home but the children, who were generally engaged drumming on the dinner-pot, or the housewife, unctuous with lard and dough, lol-li-bye-babying a boisterous child to sleep, was compelled to act as carrier and postmaster himself.

At another point upon the route, the commission of postmaster fell upon the thick shoulders of a Dutchman, remarkable for nothing but his full, round stomach. This was his pride, and he would pat it incessantly while he dilated upon the virtues of his "krout" and his "frow."

It would have been amazingly stupid for the Department to have questioned his order or integrity, for as the lean mail-bag came tumbling into his door from the saddle, the old comical Dutchman and his devoted wife carried it to a rear bedroom in his house, poured the contents upon the floor, where at one time it actually took them both from three o'clock one afternoon until nine the next morning to change the mail! Believing with Lord Bacon, that "knowledge is power," he detained about election time, all political documents directed to his opponents. These he carefully deposited in a safe place in his garret until after election day, when they were handed over with great liberality to those to whom they belonged, provided he was paid the postage.

"At another remote place where the office was kept, the mail-bag being sometimes returned to the post-boy almost empty, led him to investigate the cause of this sudden collapse in a neighborhood inhabited by few. The pro

lific number of ten children, graduating from one to twenty in years, all called the postmaster "dad," and as none could read, letters and papers came to a dead stop on arriving thus far. As these were poured out on the floor among pans and kettles, each child would seize a package, exclaiming, this is for me, and this for you, and that for some one else, until the greater bulk of mail-matter intended for other offices was parceled out and appropriated, and never heard of again."

THE PENNSYLVANIA COAL COMPANY.

The definite and successful character of the coal schemes devised by the Wurts brothers, tested amidst every pos sible element of discouragement and hostility, inclined capitalists to glance toward the hills from whence coal slowly drifted to the sea-board. Drinker and Meredith, aiming at reciprocal objects, and alive to venture and enterprise, each obtained a charter for a railroad in the valley, which, owing to the absence of capital, proved of no practical value at the time to any one.

Twenty-one years after coal was carried from Carbondale by railroad toward a New York market, the Pennsylvania Coal Company began the transportation of their coal from the Lackawanna. This company, the second one operating in the valley, was incorporated by the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1838, with a capital of $200,000. The proposed road was to connect Pittston with the Delaware and Hudson Canal at some point along the Wallenpaupack Creek in the county of Wayne.

The commissioners appointed in this act organized the company in the spring of 1839, and commenced operat ing in Pittston on a small scale. After mining a limited quantity of coal from their lands of which they were allowed to hold one thousand acres-it was taken down the North Branch Canal, finding a market at Harrisburg and other towns along the Susquehanna.

Simultaneously with the grant of this charter, another was given to a body of gentlemen in Honesdale, known as the Washington Coal Company, with a capital of $300,000, empowered to hold two thousand acres of land in the coal basin. This last charter, lying idle for nine years, was sold to William Wurts, Charles Wurts, and others of Philadelphia, in 1847.

In 1845, the first stormy impulse or excitement in coal lands went through the central and lower part of the valley. Large purchases of coal property were made for a few wealthy men of Philadelphia, who had reconnoitered the general features of the country with a view of constructing a railroad from the Lackawanna to intersect the Delaware and Hudson Canal near the mouth of the Paupack.

The preliminary surveys upon the proposed route had barely commenced, before there sprang up in Providence and Blakeley, opposition of the most relentless and formidable character. Men who had hitherto embarrassed the company mining coal in Carbondale during its infancy, found scope here for their remaining malignity. The most plausible ingenuity was employed to defeat the entrance of a road whose operations could not fail to inspire and enlarge every industrial activity along its border. Meeting after meeting was held at disaffected points, having for their object the destruction of the very measures, which, when matured, were calculated to result as they did to the advantage of those who opposed them. It was urged with no little force, that if these Philadelphians "seeking the blood of the country," were allowed to make a railroad through Cobb's Gap, the only natural key or eastern outlet to the valley, the rich deposits of coal and iron remaining in the hands of the settlers would be locked in and rendered useless forever. Such fallacious notions, urged by alms-asking demagogues with steady clamor upon a people jealous of their prerogatives, inflamed the public mind for a period of three years

against this company, but after such considerations as selfish agitators will sometimes covet and accept tranquilized opposition, those amicable relations which have since existed with the country commenced.

In 1846, the Legislature of Pennsylvania passed "an act incorporating the Luzerne and Wayne Railroad Company, with a capital stock of $500,000, with authority to construct a road from the Lackawaxen to the Lackawanna."

Before this company manifested organic life, its charter, confirmed without reward, and that of the Washington Coal Company being purchased, were merged into the Pennsylvania Coal Company, by an act of the Legislature passed in 1849.

This road, whose working capacity is equal to one and a half million tons per annum, was commenced in 1848; completed in May, 1850. It is forty-seven miles in length, passing with a single track from the coal-mines on the Susquehanna at Pittston to those lying near Cobb's Gap, terminating at the Delaware and Hudson Canal at the spirited village of Hawley. It is worked at moderate expense, and in the most simple manner for a profitable coal-road-the cars being drawn up the mountain by a series of stationary steam-engines and planes, and then allowed to run by their own weight, at a rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, down a grade sufficiently descending to give the proper momentum to the train. The movement of the cars is so easy, that there is but little wear along the iron pathway, while the too rapid speed is checked by the slight application of brakes. No railroad leading into the valley makes less noise; none does so really a remunerative business, earning over ten per cent. on its capital at the present low prices of coal; thus illustrating the great superiority of a "gravity road" over all others for the cheap transportation of anthracite over the ridges surrounding the coal-fields of Pennsylvania.

The true system, exemplified twenty years ago by its present superintendent, John B. Smith, Esq., of uniting

the interests of the laboring-man with those of the company, as far as possible, has been one of the most efficient measures whereby "strikes" have been obviated, and the general prosperity of the road steadily advanced.

Through the instrumentality of Mr. Smith this has been done in a manner so uniform yet unobtrusive, as to make it a model coal-road. It carries no passengers.

This company, having a capital of about $4,000,000, gives employment to over three thousand men.

FROM PITTSTON TO HAWLEY.

A ride upon a coal-train over the gravity road of the Pennsylvania Coal Company, from Pittston to Hawley, is not without interest or incident. Starting from the banks of the Susquehanna, it gradually ascends the border of the Moosic Mountain for a dozen miles, when, as if refreshed by its slow passage up the rocky way, it hurries the long train down to the Dyberry at Hawley with but a single stoppage.

Let the tourist willing to blend venture with pleasure, step upon the front of the car as it ascends Plane No. 2, at Pittston, and brings to view the landscape of Wyoming Valley, with all its variety of plain, river, and mountain, made classic by song and historic by her fields of blood. The Susquehanna, issuing from the highland lakes of Otsego, flows along, equaled only in beauty by the Rhine, through a region famed for its Indian history-the massacre upon its fertile plain, and the sanguinary conflict between the Yankees and Pennymites a century ago. The cars, freighted with coal, move their spider-feet toward Hawley. Slow at first, they wind around curve and hill, gathering speed and strength as they oscillate over ravine, woodland, and water. Emerging from deep cuts or dense woods, the long train approaches Spring Brook. Crossing this trout stream upon a trestling thrown across the ravine of a quarter of a mile, the cars slacken their speed