Riders of the Pony Express by Ralph Moody Maria Merian began as a bedtime story

began as a bedtime story told to his only child

crystals and birds' eggs

-Hand printed with discharge water-based Ink

A symbolic harbinger of happiness

38Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

Riders of the Pony Express by Ralph Moody Maria Merian began as a bedtime storyPrior to the Civil War, the fastest mail between the West Coast and the East took almost thirty days by stagecoach along a southern route through Texas. Some Californians feared their state would not remain in the Union, separated so far from the free states. Then businessman William Russell invested in a way to deliver mail between San Francisco and the farthest western railroad, in Saint Joseph, Missouri across two thousand miles of mountains,