FRANCE.—By carriers without fee (to the door) in both city and country. Poste restante exists for letters so addressed, and when the person’s address is not found. HANSEATIC CITIES—BREMEN.—By letter-carriers to the door. ITALY.—To the door by carriers without fee. THE NETHERLANDS.—By carriers without fee. PRUSSIA.—By carriers. In larger cities the fee will soon be abolished entirely; in the rural districts it is six pfennige (about one and a quarter cent) per letter. SWITZERLAND.—By carriers without fee. XIV. Miscellaneous. _THE ANDERSONVILLE POST-OFFICE._ The following touching lines, by George H. Hollister, Esq., of Litchfield, Connecticut, are descriptive of an incident in the _pen_ of the Union prisoners at Andersonville, Georgia. The war has elicited nothing more beautiful in description or of sadder interest:— “No blanket round his wasted limbs, Under the rainy sky he slept, While, pointing his envenom’d shafts Around him Death, the archer, crept. He dream’d of hunger, and held out His hand to clutch a little bread, That a white angel with a torch, Among the living and the dead, Seem’d bearing, smiling as he went: The vision waked him, as he spied The post-boy follow’d by a crowd Of famish’d prisoners, who cried For letters—letters from their friends. Crawling upon his hands and knees, He hears his own name call’d, and, lo! A letter from his wife he sees! “Gasping for breath, he shriek’d aloud, And, lost in nature’s blind eclipse, Faltering amid the suppliant crowd, Caught it and press’d it to his lips. A guard who follow’d, red and wroth, And flourishing a rusty brand, Reviled him with a taunting oath, And snatch’d the letter from his hand. ‘First pay the postage, whining wretch!’ Despair had made the prisoner brave: ‘Then give me back my money, sir! I am a captive,—not a slave. You took my money and my clothes; Take my life, too,—but let me know How Mary and the children are, And I will bless you ere I go.’ “The very moonlight through his hands, As he stood supplicating, shone, And his sharp features shaped themselves Into a prayer, and such a tone Of anguish there was in his cry For wife and children, that the guard— Thinking upon his own—pass’d by And left him swooning on the sward. Beyond the ‘dead-line’ fell his head: The eager sentry knew his mark, And with a crash the bullet sped Into his brain, and all was dark. But when they turn’d his livid cheek Up toward the light, the pale lips smiled, Kissing a picture fair and meek That held in either hand a child.” _A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS._ “The Wheeling Intelligencer” (1865) gives the following “chapter of accidents”: it says,—