%190. The Fire Service.%--the ambulance, the steam fire engine, the hose cart, the hook and ladder company, the police patrol, the police officer on the street corner, the letter carrier gathering the mail, the district messenger boy, the express company, the delivery wagon of the stores, have all come in since Washington died. In his day the law required every householder in the city to be a fireman. His name might not appear on the rolls of any of the fire companies, he might not help to drag through the streets the lumbering tank which served as a fire engine, but he must have in his hall, or beneath the stairs, or hanging up behind his shop door, at least one leathern bucket inscribed with his name, and a huge bag of canvas or of duck. Then, if he were aroused at the dead of night by the cry of fire and the clanging of every church bell in the town, he seized this bucket and his bag, and, while his wife put a lighted candle in the window to illuminate the street, set off for the fire. The smoke or the flame was his guide, for the custom of indicating the place by a number of strokes on a bell had not yet come in. When at last he arrived at the scene he found there no idle spectators. Every one was busy. Some hurried into the building and filled their sacks with such movable goods as came nearest to hand. Some joined the line that stretched away to the water, and helped to pass the full buckets to those who stood by the fire. Others took posts in a second line, down which the empty buckets were hastened to the pump. The house would often be half consumed when the shouting made known that the engine had come. It was merely a pump mounted over a tank. Into the tank the water from the buckets was poured, and it was pumped thence by the efforts of a dozen men. [Illustration: Fire engine of 1800[1]] [Footnote 1: From an old cut] %191. The Post Office.%--Washington sees a great wagon or a white trolley car marked United States Mail, and on inquiry is told that the money now spent by the government each year for the support of the post offices would have more than paid the national debt when he was President. He hears with amazement that there are now 75,000 post offices, and recalls that in 1790 there were but seventy-five. He picks up from the sidewalk a piece of paper with a little pink something on the corner. He is told that the portrait on it is his own, that it is a postage stamp, that it costs two cents, and will carry a letter to San Francisco, a city he never heard of, and, if the person to whom it is addressed cannot be found, will bring the letter back to the sender, a distance of over 5000 miles. In his day a letter was a single sheet of paper, no matter how large or small, and the postage on it was determined not by weight, but by distance, and might be anything from six to twenty-five cents.