[Illustration: Coin.] Pine Tree Twopence. "IN MASATHVSET" "NEW ENGLAND" "1662" [Illustration: Coin.] Pine Tree Threepence. "MASATHVSET" "NEW ENGLAND" "1652" "III" In the middle colonies, including Pennsylvania, the pound had possessed still a different value, the Spanish dollar, in which the Continental Congress kept its accounts, there equalling ninety pence. This is why those accounts stand in dollars and ninetieths, a notation so puzzling to many. A "real" would here be about one-eleventh of ninety pence, hence called the "eleven-penny-piece," shortened into "levy." Dividing a levy by two would give five (and a fraction); hence the term "five-penny-piece," "fippenny," or "fip," for the half-real or six and one-quarter cent piece. There are doubtless yet people in Virginia and Maryland who never say "twenty-five cents," but instead, "two levies and a fip." [Illustration: Coin.] Pine Tree Sixpence. "IN MASATHVSET" "ANO NEW ENGLAND" "1652" "VI" General intelligence had improved, partly from the greater number, better quality, and quicker and fuller distribution of newspapers. Correspondents were numerous. Intelligent persons visiting at a distance from home were wont to write long letters to their local newspapers, containing all the items of interest which they could scrape together. Papers sprung up at every considerable hamlet. Even the Ohio Valley did not lack. Perhaps four and a half million copies a year were issued in the whole country by 1800. They were admitted now--not so, however, under the original postal law--as a regular part of the mails, and thus found their way to nearly all homes. The news which they brought was often old news, of course, post riders requiring twenty-nine and one-half hours between Philadelphia and either New York or Baltimore; but they were read with none the less avidity. Its first mail reached Buffalo in 1803, on horseback. Mail went thither bi-weekly till 1806, then weekly. Postal rates were high, ranging for letters from six cents for thirty miles to twenty-five for four hundred and fifty miles or over. So late as 1796 New York City received mails from North and from South, and sent mails in both directions, only twice weekly between November 1st and May 1st, and but thrice weekly the rest of the year. In 1794 the great cities enjoyed carriers, who got two cents for each letter delivered. In 1785 there were two dailies, The Pennsylvania Packet and The New York Advertiser, but, as yet, no Sunday paper appeared, nor any scientific, religious, or illustrated journal, nor any devoted to literature or trade. The New York Medical Repository began in 1797, the first scientific periodical in America. In 1801 seventeen dailies existed. Paper was scarce and high, so that appeals were published in most of the news sheets imploring people to save their rags. [Illustration: Coin.] Pine Tree Shilling. "IN MASATHVSET" "ANO NEW ENGLAND" "1652" "XII"