188 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



post office may be found almost a current history of the 

 village. In the windows are home-made posters an- 

 nouncing a church supper, a high school basket ball 

 game, a political rally. On the bulletin board, and 

 spilling from it out on the adjacent walls, are lost-and- 

 found notices, gloves, hair ribbons, and other trifles 

 picked up on the road and pinned here awaiting an 

 owner, the tax collector's warning, the list of voters, a 

 plea for soldiers to join the United States army, the 

 fish and game laws, a coloured picture of a gypsy moth, 

 and the list of unclaimed letters for the week. Every 

 one in the village comes to the post office, even if 

 only for the reason that brought the old gentleman in 

 Mr. Ade's fable, who went every day because in 1888 

 he got a seed catalogue. The post office is a social 

 institution and a clearing house for information, no 

 less than a means of distributing mail. It is from 

 such an office that the Rural Delivery man sets out 

 whom we are about to follow. He will take us back 

 into a world which some of us had almost forgotten. 

 This particular carrier still drives a buggy. Many 

 of his fellows, especially those with long routes in 

 regions where the Winters are not severe nor the dry 

 roads long delayed in Spring, now employ one of 

 those small, cheap automobiles that have been the 

 admiration of the European armies. But our carrier 

 is in a northern mountain region where as yet macadam 

 is almost unknown, and a motor would be impracticable 



