daily paper, it may not occur that the mail stages of the old days were the newsboys of the age, and that thousands looked to their coming for the first word of news from distant portions of the land. In times of war or political excitement the express mailstage and its precious load of papers from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, was hailed as the latest editions of our newspapers are today. Thus it must have been that a greater proportion of the population along the Cumberland Road awaited with eager interest the coming of the stage in the old days, than today await the arrival of the long mail trains from the east.
Late in the 30's and in the 40's, when the mailstage system reached its highest perfection, the mail and passenger service had been entirely separated, special stages being constructed for hauling the former. As early as 1837 the Post Office Department decreed that the mails, which heretofore had always been held as of secondary consideration compared with passengers, should be carried in specially arranged vehicles, into which the postmaster should put them
