division; and four in Boston as superintendent of the New England division. A better posted. more gentlemanly, or more valued expressman it would be hard to find.

Homer Ashley, the Boston agent of the American, is a very quiet gentleman, always at his post, and faithful to his office, which he has acceptably occupied for some years. He has three or four useful clerks, and as many drivers. Probably the increased business will demand a much larger force before the season is over. There are unusually large freights moving, daily, under the new impetus given to New England manufac

tures.

The American's "New England division," of course, embraces Maine and Massachusetts. This division was established in 1869, upon a substantial basis, by the appointment of H. W. Dwight as its superintendent. Prior to that the company's service in that section (if we except the Albany, Springfield and Boston route, sold to the American by J. M. Thompson, Wm. N. Melcher and Robt. L. Johnson, in 1861) was much more limited. It now includes, besides the newly acquired routes in Maine, those on the following named railroads: The Boston and Albany, the Connecticut River, the Pittsfield and North Adams, the New Haven and North Hampton (north of Westfield), the New London Northern (north of Palmer), the Springfield and North Eastern, the Vermont Valley, and a portion of the Vermont and Massachusetts.

Its connections are the Adams Express Company, on the south, and the National, and United States and Canada Express Companies, on the north. Also Earle & Prew, at Worcester, Mass., and the New York and Boston Dispatch Express Company, together with the host of small independent local Expresses at Boston, of which Penniman & Co.'s Lowell Express

is one.

.

The American runs its own line to the west, northwest, and southwest. Its principal New England agents are: H. Ashley, Boston, Mass.; E. O. Ellis, Worcester, Mass.; J. F. Holbrook, Palmer, Mass.; J. W. Baldwin, Springfield, Mass.; J. C. Brooks, Westfield, Mass.; H. W. Dewey, Pittsfield, Mass. ; R. H. Bump, Chatham, N. Y.; S. M. Gilmore, Holyoke, Mass. ; Miss C. M. Clark, Northampton, Mass.; H. R. Freshour,

Greenfield, Mass.; W. Bemis, Brattleboro', Vt.; F. A. Barker, Keene, N. H.; Geo. H. Babbitt, Bellows Falls, Vt. (who is also superintendent of one division of the United States and Canada Express Company).

H. W. Dwight's connection with the department commenced in 1866, in distributing the stock, appointing the agents, and making the railroad contracts for the Merchants' Union Express Company. That institution living fast and dying early, Mr. Dwight was appointed division superintendent (in 1869) for the American, in the same field as already mentioned. In 1875 his rank was raised to that of assistant general superintendent, a flattering testimonial to his superior capacity. He has now a larger field for actual operation than ever before.

New England is, as it were, one great manufacturing town; and the products are everything which Yankee ingenuity can invent, from a Corliss engine down to a jewel screw of the Hampden Watch Company.

CHAPTER II.

THE ADAMS AND THE LOCALS IN THE EASTERN STATES.-WELLS, FARGO & CO.-EXPRESS BUSINESS A SPECIALTY.

super

THE New England Division of the Adams, under the vision of Clapp Spooner, the resident manager (for many years a director in the company), has its strong and best hold in Connecticut, though a power in Boston, where Colonel Waldo Adams is agent. The resident superintendent lives in Bridgeport, Ct., the headquarters of his department, where the company has a competent clerical force. C. E. Roath, the assistant superintendent, resides in New Haven, when at home. Another active and most valuable man, prominent in that office, is W. L. Hubbell, the auditor, whose practical knowledge of Express matters is not, by any means, limited to a local experience. The same might be said of William Stone, the popular agent at Providence, R. I., and Frank Barton, at New Haven, Ct.

Colonel Waldo Adams has an able force in his department, in Boston. In the front rank are Dan. Lovering, Jr. (one of the most genial as well as efficient), G. H. Clarke, W. A. Hartwell, and W. R. Baker. During the last twenty years, its able management by the late Alvin Adams-a perfect gentleman in society, and a kind, just man at all times and under all circumstances has retained for the company its old prestige in the favor of the public. Its present office is in Court street, near the court-house. The company at this point, has pursued the even tenor of its way without much internal change, except in the loss of the founder (from whom it took its name) and several favorite employees: Woodward, Haskell, Richardson, Dow, Kingsbury, and one or two others. Since our former record of it, there came, first the war, and, seven years later, the "Great Boston Fire." The former largely increased the "Adams" business, and the latter burnt it out of its Washington street office. Of all the three powerful companies, the

Adams had the most lucrative, if not the largest patronage, during the five years succeeding the capture of Fort Sumter by the enemy. This arose from the fact that it was the only Express company in the District of Columbia and in Maryland; and had, besides, several long routes east and west; and connections with its competitors where it had no lines of its own, and these were like so many tributary streams coming from all quarters, and emptying themselves into one great river. The Boston office, and the whole New England division of the Adams, shared in these facilities and the consequent prosperity, and, for a few years, "they made things spin." Then succeeded the usual retributive punishment of a nation emerging from a war: a depreciation of all values; a multitude of men without employment; the loss of all mercantile and financial confidence; a corrupt use of fiduciary trusts; a monetary panic, succeeded by the bursting of banks, both national and savings; and business in general so depressed and lifeless that it was 66 as good as dead."

Now, it not only "lives, and moves, and has a being," but it lives with a will, moves rushingly, and has a being of innumerable steam-engines' power. Boston is all aglow; at least her locomotive factories and foundries are, and the thousands of mill-wheels throughout New England are buzzing merrily.

And amid all of this cheerful noise of the Yankee industries there are located the quiet study, and well-thumbed library, of many a savant and poet, or writer of metaphysical sermons and popular lectures (a class of brain power, or brain culture, of which Massachusetts has so much); and for all this whirring and whacking, and shoving and rasping, and rattling and rushing, and pulling and hauling, in the world of material production and manipulation, outside of their retreats, these manufacturers of mental manikins and ethical theories, will not mind it a whit, nor, in their self-absorption, heed the fact that once more the world of business is alive again. Joseph Cook will not have the same large audiences, composed mostly of mercantile men, at lectures delivered with what Macauley calls a "fine audacity," during office hours, but he .will have his following of implicit admirers of his oracular pronunciamentos all the same; and the same devotees of the

(somewhat over) finely cultivated "old man eloquent" Ralph Emerson, with the aged Alcott at their head, will meet as usual in the temple of their god in "sweet concord."

Here, within reach of the Boston telephones (if you desire to converse with them), are many of the literary and scientific men of this section. Longfellow and Holmes (a short fellow), Whipple, Lowell, Bartol, and Fields, all live here, and, it is to be hoped, will keep doing so for many years to come. When young, Whipple wrote an imaginary pre-view of some social scenes possible in the year of our Lord 1900. May he live to ascertain how true a prophet he was! These men express little else than their thoughts, but, as we pass, let us pay them our respects.

Yonder the Quincy expressman runs with a parcel into the ancient mansion of the signer of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams, second President of these United States. There another President, his son (the most famous of all), was born, and after eighty years of life, more remarkable than usually falls to the lot even of great men, died with these words on his lips, "This is the last of earth." And there, too, his son, Charles Francis Adams, our former minister to England, resides.

Here is an Express that runs to Harvard College, and, on the way, stops occasionally to leave a package for Professor Longfellow, at a large wooden mansion which has a nice lawn and some mammoth old elms in front to shade the road, and was for half a century or more well known as Washington's headquarters when the continental army was encamped in the neighborhood.

There is another whose short route ends at the battle-ground in Lexington, where the farmers "fit" the red-coated "lobsters" of King George, and afterwards drove them ten miles, until they lay, as Rufus Choate once said in an oration, "like panting bloodhounds before the guns of Boston" (where the army of invasion was then entrenched). He will point out to you, if you ask him, the little cottage (now about 120 years old) which for some weeks, or months, was the secret refuge of Samuel Adams and John Hancock from the fury of the King, who had offered a reward to any one who would bring their