Washington's Business Hours

1895

"In one respect," said a visitor to me impatiently, "the national capital is behind every modern city, and that is in the handling of the mails. No mails are taken up after 9 o'clock, not even at the hotels. If you post a letter anywhere along between 8 or 9 o'clock, it is likely to remain there until morning, although mail trains are departing all night. The only way you can get a letter off with certainty in the evening is to send it or take it to the railway station and post it on the mail car. And this is at the fountain head of the United States mail service! They expect a man here to finish business during working hours and to go to bed early. You have scarcely time to get an after theater lunch before you are summarily ejected from the restaurant and must go home, and as the cars all stop running shortly afterward you really must go home or else walk or hire a cab. It seems funny to a metropolitan to have to break for the last car before fairly finishing an after supper cigar." — Pittsburg Dispatch.