Page:What to do for Uncle Sam; a first book of citizenship (IA whattodoforuncle00bail).pdf/126

122 up to your door and rings the bell. He gives you a whole handful of stamped envelopes that look as if they held valentines. One of them is post-marked Boston, and the mark tells you also that it was posted last night. It has come to you, in New York, in one night. If you lived in Chicago it would take only two days.

How was this magic worked? It was your Uncle Sam who did it. When he blows the postman’s whistle he has a story to tell you of the wonderful adventures that every letter, and parcel, and magazine, and newspaper has to-day in the United States mail.

He has a great many people at Washington working on every postage stamp before it is ready for you to stick it on your letter. Artists draw the pictures for the stamps, very large, and photographers make them small enough to fit on a stamp. The lettering is very carefully drawn, too, and then engravers cut the design and letters on steel plates from which the stamps are printed. Several people are needed to run a stamp printing press, to ink it, clean it, put in and take out the paper, and count the number of sheets that are run through.

Then the stamps have to be gummed, and one very odd thing about this part of stamp making is that the Government has to mix different kinds