Often they told of great hardship and stirring adventures in the wilderness and of events beyond the sea.
Every week the mail brought papers from the three big cities, which were read eagerly and loaned or exchanged until their contents had traveled through every street.

Benjamin Franklin's _Pennsylvania Gazette_ came to John Irons, and having been read aloud by the fireside was given to Simon Grover in exchange for Rivington's _New York Weekly_.
Jack was in a coasting party on Gallows Hill when his father brought him a fat letter from England.

He went home at once to read it.

The letter was from Margaret Hare--a love-letter which proposed a rather difficult problem.

It is now a bit of paper so brittle with age it has to be delicately handled.