Let us give a few more American illustrations of the way to wealth, Boston has the honour of originating the express companies of America. One morning a man took the East Boston ferry, bound for Salem, over the Eastern Railroad. He held in his hand a small trunk, trimmed with red morocco, and fastened with red nails. The trunk contained a few notes which the person was to collect; a small sum of money he was to pay; and a few commissions he was to execute. “These,” says an American newspaper, “were the tangible things in the trunk. Besides these notes, money, and orders, that little trunk, which a child might have carried, contained the germ of the express business of the land, whose agencies, untiring as the sun, are almost as regular.” Alvin Adams—for that is and was the name of the individual referred to—commenced the express business, as an experiment, between New York and Boston in 1840. He had no business, no customers, and no money. He shrewdly saw the coming greatness of his calling, though for one year it was carried on in the smallest possible way. He had indomitable energy; his integrity was without a question; he gained slowly on the confidence of the community, and closed the year with a future of success before him. In 1854, the business was transformed into a joint-stock company, and it now stretches out its arms to all the towns and villages in the land. It is an express company for merchandise, from a bundle to a ship-load. The amount of money received and disbursed every day exceeds that of any bank in the nation. It collects and pays out the smallest sum, and from that to a large waggon loaded with money, and drawn by three horses. During the war, the company rendered efficient service to the government: in time of peril or panic, when the property of the army was abandoned or sacrificed, it bore away cart-loads of money by its coolness and courage, and saved millions to the Treasury. The company opened a department expressly to carry money from the private soldiers to their families. For a very small sum, funds were taken from the soldier and delivered to his friends in any part of the land. On several occasions, the transport department in the army being in utter confusion, application was made to the Adams’ Express Company for relief.