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ensure his newspaper, with the largest circulation of any on the continent, regularly was mailed to subscribers. In 1751, when America’s deputy postmaster general died, Franklin applied for the job, and upon his appointment, he went to work to transform the American postal system. For four years, he worked without compensation. Only if the system showed a profit would he get paid; for decades it had been operating at a loss.
    Franklin preferred to learn from experience, and within a few months after his appointment, he began a ten-week journey east, traveling across New Jersey through New York into Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.
    The improvements Franklin achieved were widely praised. He reduced the travel time of a Boston-to-Philadelphia letter from six weeks to three. Abolishing the monopoly in which each postmaster sent the newspaper of his choice through the mail free, he opened the service to all papers for a small fee. He insisted postmasters track their revenue and ordered them to print names of people who had letters waiting for them - a practice he had followed in Philadelphia. If customers did not pick up their letter, the post office delivered it the following day and charged an extra penny. Franklin had tried this first in Philadelphia, and it made the post office more popular. Too often, letters were allowed to sit for weeks and were lost or read by others. After three months, unclaimed letters were forwarded to the central post office in Philadelphia, the first dead-letter office.
    On the roads, Franklin had milestones erected so post riders could pace themselves. By talking with riders and postmasters, Franklin boosted morale. He consulted post riders and postmasters on new roads, fords, and ferries. In three years, he overhauled the service, improving its speed and reliability. In the fourth year of Franklin’s administration, it earned a profit for the first time in history, collecting more revenue in twelve months than it had in the previous thirty-six.
    Traveling was a rugged in the 1750s, and only someone with Franklin’s rugged makeup could have endured the bad weather, terrible roads, and innumerable rivers a traveler had to cross. Taverns and inns were few and often overcrowded. It was difficult to secure a place by the fire, after hours on the road in the rain or cold.
    Once, Franklin stopped at a Rhode Island tavern on a rainy day to find two dozen travelers crowded around the room’s only fire.
    â€œBoy,” Franklin said to the tavern keeper’s son, “get my horse a quart of oysters.”
    â€œA quart of oysters?” gasped the boy.
    â€œYou heard me, a quart of oysters,” Franklin boomed.
    The boy obeyed, and everyone stampeded out the door to see the horse who ate oysters. The horse refused the oysters. Baffled, the group returned to the tavern to find Deputy Postmaster General Franklin sitting in the chair closest to the fire.
    His job as postmaster allowed Franklin to justify occasional retreats from the pressures of Philadelphia. On one such trip to New England, he met Catherine Ray. Twenty-three years old, she was the first cousin of his brother’s wife. She was charming and beautiful. Franklin called her Caty, and the two grew close over a period of weeks in Boston and then at her family farm in Rhode Island. For months after he returned home, Franklin and Caty exchanged letters. While Franklin was away, he entrusted his son to intercept his mistress’ letters and forward them on to him, so that his wife did not see them. William also arranged for discreet delivery of Franklin’s reply.
    But the long-distance love affair grew cold when a letter was lost in transit, and Franklin, preoccupied with politics, failed to respond to three increasingly breathless pleas for attention. Catherine’s desperation was unnerving: “Surely I have wrote too much and you are affronted with me or have not received my letters, in which I