A Maryland statute, in 1674, resolves "that noe Person in that Province shall have a Licence to keep Ordinary for the future but th{t} he shall give Bond to his Excellency with good Sureties that he shall keep foure good ffeather beds for the Entertainment of Customers." In any place where the county court is held, he is directed to keep "eight ffeather or fflock beds at the least, and ffurniture suitable." The charges of the ordinary-keeper are fixed by law. He is allowed to charge ten pounds of tobacco per meal "for dyet," ten pounds "for small beare," and four "for lodging _in a bed with sheets_." While the traveller was loitering on the road, enjoying hospitality or enduring ordinaries, those he left at home were in ignorance of his whereabouts; and it was only after days or weeks of anxious waiting, that they could hope to hear of his safe arrival at his destination. Meanwhile rumor, which always thrives in proportion to ignorance, might make their lives miserable by reports of a riderless horse seen galloping into some village, of storms and gales, or of trees crashing across the lonely roads. In the absence of the post and the telegraph, this spreading of false news became so troublesome that an act was passed in Maryland declaring that, "Whereas many Idle and Bussie-headed people doe forge and divulge falce Rumors and Reports," it is enacted that they be either fined or "receive such corporall punishment, not extending to life or member, as to the Iustices of that court shall seeme meete." It was long before the idea of a postal service under government control dawned upon the Colonies. Throughout almost the whole of the seventeenth century letters were sent by the hand of the chance traveller. Maryland directed that in the case of public state-papers the sheriff of one county should carry them to the sheriff of the next, and so on to their goal; but private letters had no such official care. An old Virginia statute commanded that "all letters superscribed _for the publique service_, should be immediately conveyed from plantation to plantation to the place and person directed, under the penalty of one hogshead of tobacco for each default." Another law, bearing date 1661, orders that "when there is any person in the family where the letters come, as can write, such person is required to endorse the day and houre he received them, that the neglect or contempt of any person stopping them may be the better knowne and punished accordingly." A letter in those days merited the attention it received, for it represented a vast deal of labor and expense. Paper was a costly luxury, as we may infer from those old yellow pages crossed and re-crossed with writing, and the tiny cramped hand in which the old sermons are written. In 1680, I find Colonel William Fitzhugh ordering from London "two large Paper-Books, one to contain about fourteen or fifteen quires of paper, the other about ten quires, and one other small one."