The story of my life ; or, The sunshine and shadow of seventy years / by Mary A. Livermore ... with hitherto unrecorded incidents and recollections of three years' experience as an army nurse in the great Civil War, and reminiscences of twenty-five years' experiences on the lecture platform ... to which is added six of her most popular lectures ... with portraits and one hundred and twenty engravings from designs by eminent artists ...

POSTAL FACILITIES FIFTY YEARS AGO.

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you b'long an' 'have yersel's!" And not till they were
seated and quiet, would she exhibit her gift.
" I fetch dis yere fo' you, Miss," she said, courtesying very
low to me as she presented her tray of home-made candies.
" De chilluns likes better de candy wi' butt'nuts in it, dat
dere ole mammy makes, dan all de painted an' striped sugar
stuff der ma buys fer 'em in Richmond. When dey's good
you kin gib 'em some o' mammy's candy."
All ran to kiss her as she bowed herself out, and Dick
raised a great laugh, as he hugged her tightly and kissed
her all over her face, by whispering so loud that we could
all hear, " Tell her to give us a great big piece now, mammy,
to pay us for being so good since she come."
We went on in this shiftless and unsatisfactory way
until Saturday, which was mail day We had but one mail
a week, when, before daylight on Saturday mornings,
Allen started on horseback for Boydton, the shire town of
the county, carrying the accumulated mail of the week, and
receiving in return the bags of mail matter sent to the
plantation. The postal facilities of the nation were in those
days in the infancy of their development. Postal routes
extended not very far outside of the cities, and rates of
postage were exceedingly high. The smallest letter sent me
from home cost me eighteen and three-quarters cents, for
the receiver of a letter at that time paid the postage.
Twenty-five cents was the price for a double letter, the
postage increasing with the number of sheets and the distance, and I have paid seventy-five cents for a letter of
several sheets. But letters were letters in those days,carefully written, read and re-read, and then put away and
preserved during a lifetime.
The arrival of the mail was an event in our plantation
life. Everything was subordinated to it, and there was a
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