Connected, however, with the various stamps now in use in this country is the necessity of teaching to our youth their use and application to banks, custom-houses, railroads, post-offices, pawnbrokers, and, in fact, as stamp tax to every trade, business, and department of government. In several of our commercial colleges an actual stamp department is invented, and mock-banks, custom-houses, steamboat-offices, post-offices, &c., are fitted up for the purpose of familiarizing youth with their use in the various mercantile and governmental departments of the country. This is what we term the best and most useful knowledge that the stamps can impart to those who are so anxious to treasure them up in albums and cabinets.[55] We annex the following article from Appleton’s “United States Postal Guide”[1864]:— “By the _Sonora_, a few days since, says a Californian correspondent, some two hundred of Uncle Sam’s orphans arrived, and were distributed around. Some were sent to Fort Alcastra, some to the barracks at the Presidio, and the remainder were quartered at Benicia barracks, preparatory to being assigned to the different companies of the regiments in this department. They will soon be scattered from Oregon to that most delightful post, Fort Yuma, in Arizona,—a place where they have to put rocks on the roofs to keep the ends of the boards from curling over like little dogs’ tails. It is a wretched place to live at, and to be ordered there is enough to make any officer resign, unless a Catholic, who acknowledges the justice of being sent to purgatory. They have a little fun even in that awful place sometimes, and an officer was telling me the other day of how he lost his postage-stamps. He had sent up here for some twenty dollars’ worth, and had left them on his table. Now, the habits, manners, and customs thereabouts are considerably on the free-and-easy style, and the Indians are allowed to roam around the garrison _ad libitum_, if they behave themselves and do not steal. On this occasion a young squaw, who had the run of the quarters, and was very much at home anywhere and everywhere, happened to stray into my friend’s room, and, seeing the postage-stamps, began to examine them with great curiosity. She discovered they would stick if wet, and forthwith a happy idea struck her. Now, the fashionable dress of the ladies of her class in that warm climate is of the briefest description. She was ambitious to dress up and excite the envy of the other Pocahontases. So she went in on the postal currency, and, much to the astonishment of the garrison, made her appearance presently on the parade-ground entirely covered over with postage-stamps. She was stuck all over with Benjamin Franklin, and the Father of his Country was plastered all over her ladyship’s glossy skin indiscriminately, regardless of dignity and decency. The ‘roar’ that greeted her, from the commanding officer down to the drummer-boys, was loud enough to be heard