In 1857 John Butterfield's newly organized Overland Mail Company reeled in a whale-sized $600,000 per year, six-year, U.S. mail contract.

  The 1861 War of Northern Aggression, which, along with 618,000 men, killed his contract and the world's longest stagecoach line: 2,800 miles, 120 miles every 24 hours, running day and night, stopping every 20 miles enroute to San Francisco.

  His overhead -- 1,000 horses, 500 mules, about 2,000 employees, 141 stage stations and 100 coaches -- was offset by a bonus: passenger service at $200 a head ($3,000 today) and 10 cents per letter. It ran twice a week. Wayside passengers paid 10 cents a mile.

  Butterfield established two routes, one from St. Louis and one from Memphis. Both met at Ft. Smith.

  The St. Louis Route entered Arkansas paralleling US 62 to US 71, traveling through Rogers and Springdale to Fayetteville, then south near Hwy. 265 through Hog Eye and Strickler, topping out at 1,500 feet along the Boston Mountain Road, beyond which laid "the roughest 10 miles between St. Louis and San Francisco."

  A New York City newsman described the ride, "I might say the road was steep, rugged, jagged, rough and mountainous, and still wish for more impressive words."

  After crossing Lee Creek, the route approximated Hwy. 220 to Cedarville, intercepting Cane Hill Road (Hwy. 59) to the Van Buren ferry, crossing the Arkansas to Ft. Smith.

  The Memphis route was haphazard and hapless. Proposed as a steamboat ride to Ft. Smith, the Arkansas, a prick of a river back then, either ran like a wild pig or merely rolled in its own mud.

  A crazy-quilt transportation system included boat, train, stage and walking through eastern Arkansas' unimproved roads, bridgeless streams, jungles, swamps and blood-sucking bugs.

  Once past Little Rock the route sort of straightened up and kind of followed the Arkansas, crossing over it at Russellville to Dardanelle and then east, mostly along Hwy. 22 through Paris and Charleston to Ft. Smith, where passengers and mail got consolidated, literally.

  Forget the cute movies with passengers in starched white shirts, sitting three abreast, facing each other. They sat three abreast on three benches. Passengers on the two facing seats had to interlock their legs, and everyone sat with their feet on the mail and their 40 pounds of free baggage on their laps (for about 25 days).

  The St. Louis group arrived in Ft. Smith after soiling their underwear several times during daredevil night rides up and down the Ozarks Mountains. Those from Memphis had their faces chewed off by crazed insects. And now they read a poster put up by Mr. Butterfield: -- YOU WILL BE TRAVELING THROUGH INDIAN COUNTRY AND THE SAFETY OF YOUR PERSON CANNOT BE VOUCHSAFED BY ANYONE BUT GOD.

  Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?