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POSTERS 325 POST-IMPRESSIONISM from 1639, when the house of Richard Fairbanks in Boston was employed for the receipt and delivery of letters for or from beyond the seas. He was allowed for every letter a penny and was obliged to answer all miscarriages through his own neglect. In 1672 the government of New York colony established "a post to go monthly from New York to Boston"; in 1702 it was changed to a fortnightly one. A general postoffice was estab- lished and erected in Virginia in 1692, and in Philadelphia in 1693. A deputy postmaster-general for America was ap- pointed in 1692; and by act of Parlia- ment in 1710 he was directed to keep his principal office in New York, "and other chief offices in some convenient place or places in other of Her Majesty's prov- inces or colonies in America"; a monop- oly was established which included also the transport of travelers, and a tariff was fixed. The system, however, proved a failure, till 1753, when Benjamin Franklin became postmaster-general ; when he was removed from office in 1774 the net revenue exceeded $15,000. In 1789, when the postoffice was trans- ferred to the new Federal Government, the number of offices in the 13 States was only about 75. Events in the his- tory of the American postal service have been the negotiation of a postal treaty with England (1846) ; the introduction of postage stamps (1847), of stamped en- velopes (1852), of the system of regis- tering letters (1855) ; and the establish- ment of the free-delivery system, and of the traveling postoffice system (1863) ; the introduction of the money order sys- tem (1864), of postal cards (1873), and, between the last two dates of stamped newspaper wrappers, and of envelopes bearing requests for the return of the inclosed letter to the writer in case of Bon-delivery ; the formation of the Uni- versal Postal Union (1873) ; the issue of "postal notes" payable to bearer (1883) ; and the establishment of a special- delivery system (1885), under which let- ters bearing an extra 10-cent stamp are delivered by special messengers immedi- ately on arrival. See United States: Section Post Office. POSTERS, a bill or placard, printed or illustrated, conspicuously exhibited to convey a message to the public. The practice of using placards for public information had its vogue among both the Greeks and Romans, but the inven- tion of printing gave the custom a de- velopment which has kept pace with modern civilization. In several cities of Europe it was the practice in the 17th century to affix theatrical announcements to the rails and posts in the streets, and in Paris the color of the poster indi- cated the theater. The posters some- times consisted of letterpress large and bold enough to eaten the public eye; sometimes the posters had rej)resenta- tions of characters and scenes from the play. The colored poster, as we now know it, was developed by Cheret, the lithographer, in Paris, who issued the first example of his skill in 1866. The circus and the theater have had the chief hand in the development of the pictorial poster, which, by the representation of stage characters, ballet girls, children, and animals, has attained a high level of art. The French poster designers, among them Grasset, Toulouse-Lautrec, Willette, Forain, Guillaume, Schwaebe, and Gossard, have given France first place in the art, but the art has attained a great development in the United States, and men like Penfield and Bradley gave it the impetus which has carried it into every field of advertising that allows pictorial representation. POST GLACIAL, in geology, a term applied to the oldest division but one of the post-Tertiary period. POST-IMPRESSIONISM, a term used to designate the development in art that succeeded impressionism, a movement in the domain particularly of painting and sculpture, that sought the representation of the subjective conception of nature rather than nature itself. In these new theories the depicting of light plays an important part, and an effort is made to find expression for the things that lie behind the surface, the human feeling and conception, the qualities of depth, and weight, ana permanence, and the ab- stractions as opposed to the superficial appearance of things. The attempts to embody these ideas in color and stone have resulted in representations having little resemblance to objects as they ap- pear to the eye. Both Cubism and Futurism are developments of Impres- sionism and Post-Impressionism. In Cubism geometrical forms play a large part. Picasso, the Spanish sculptor and painter, was the first to give the move- ment an international vogue, and in the establishment he had the co-operation of both French and Spanish artists, who organized the first collective exhibition in Paris in 1911. Futurism had its birth almost simultaneously with Cubism, the originator being the Italian Marinetti. Its central idea is the representation of the interior energy and possibility of objects in nature and the results are usually bizarre. The movements have spread to all the countries of Europe and America, but though they have found conspicuous adherents, and embody cer-