It will readily be seen that vast improvements have been made in postal arrangements. The condition of the United States postal system has been greatly improved each year. It seems almost marvelous that the mail service is so reliable and that the transmission of mail matter is so expeditious and satisfactory. If mail matter should happen to be lost, which is very rarely the case, the facilities for finding it are sometimes quite surprising, as the following incident will show. A young lady in Iowa sent by mail a piece of crocheted edging to her cousin in Dorchester, which is a part of Boston, Massachusetts. The contents slipped out somewhere and the wrapper was delivered to its proper address, but without the edging. A letter had already been received in which the sending of the article was mentioned, so that the receiver knew from whom the wrapper came. She notified the sub-postmaster in charge of the Dorchester office, and he began the system of tracing by means of blanks prepared for that purpose. He wrote out the description of the article and the facts of the case, and sent these blanks to the postmaster at Boston. The Boston postmaster forwarded them to Chicago; from Chicago the blanks were sent to the several offices west of Chicago until they reached the point of departure, in Iowa. No trace was found to answer the description, and the blanks came back to Chicago. They were then sent eastward. At Cleveland the missing article was found and forwarded to the postmaster at Chicago, whence the blanks had last been sent out. The Chicago postmaster forwarded the same to Boston with the missing article; from Boston the description and the merchandise were sent to Dorchester. Meantime the family had moved to Salem, and the Dorchester postmaster forwarded them to Salem. The receiver secured the missing article and receipted for the same, while the description with its various entries of travel, from Dorchester to Boston, from Boston to Chicago, from Chicago to the various offices in Iowa, then back to Chicago, thence to the different offices as far as Cleveland, and then from Cleveland to Chicago, Boston, Dorchester, and Salem, furnished a document of considerable interest. In 1790 there were 70 post offices and 1,875 miles of post roads. That year the number of letters and papers delivered did not exceed 2,000,000. In 1890, one hundred years afterward, there were more than 65,000 post offices and more than 30,000 mail routes. During that year more than 10,000,000,000 pieces of mail matter were handled. The receipts and expenditures of the post-office department in the United States amount annually to about $75,000,000. This résumé of the postal service plainly shows the energy, enterprise, and intelligence of our people, the success attained by our Government, and the tremendous growth and development of our country. CHAPTER IV. SIGNALING.