England on the Rails

JOUY, the author of L’Hermite de la Chaussée d’Antin, which is the French Spectator, has a remark which those who are ready to generalize upon national peculiarities world do well to consider. “ Plus on réfléchit,” he says, “ et plus on observe, plus on se convainct de la fausseté de la plupart de ces jugements portés sur un nation entière par quelques écrivains et adoptés sans examen par les autres.”¹ He illustrates and confirms this conclusion by asking, Who is the Frenchman that does not believe himself to be one of a people the most mobile and the most, inconstant in the world ? Nevertheless, he adds, if we observe and study the character of our people elsewhere than in the capital, where it denaturalizes itself so easily, we shall discover that, so far from being inclined to change, the French is, of the peoples of Europe, the most enslaved by its prejudices, and the most bound down to routine. The French Addison was right ; and there could be no more impressive illustration of the truth of his judgment than the opinions formed of each other, and tenaciously held for more than half a century, by the people of England and those of “ America,” or, as the latter is generally called in the former, “ the States,” both phrases being brief make-shifts for the long, complex, and purely political designation, “the United States of America,” One of these notions is counterchanged, as the heralds say. When one half a shield, for example, is white and the other black (party per pale or per fesse, argent and sable), and a figure is imposed upon it of the tints of the field, the part which is upon the black side being white and that which is upon the white side being black, it is said to be counterchanged. This quaint contrivance, by which a figure, a lion for example, is shown one half black and the other white, in opposition to the party-colored background upon which it is displayed, has a grotesque resemblance to the opinions sometimes entertained of each other on one subject by two individuals or two peoples. Thus British writers, and the British people generally, adopting, as Jouy says, without question the opinions of their writers, speak of us as a nation of travelers; while many of us, on the other hand, think of Englishmen as staid, immobile folk, slow in all their actions, mental and physical, and, compared with ourselves sluggish, stolid, and with a dislike of movement which is composed in equal parts of vis inertiae and local attachment. There was never a notion more incorrect, or set up more directly in the face of commonly known facts. Englishmen are, and always have been, the greatest travelers in the world. Englishmen, of all people, have been the readiest to leave an old home for a new one. They are the explorers, they are the colonizers, of the earth. It is because Englishmen are travelers and colonizers that two English - speaking nations monopolize the larger and the fairer part of this great continent; that the vast continent-like island of Australia is rapidly becoming another New England; that Victoria counts among her titles that of Empress of India; and that the aborigines of the southern wilds of Africa are beginning to yield place to the Anglo-Saxon. Even on this continent more men from the Old England than from the New have traveled to the Western plains for curiosity or for the pleasures of the chase; and in South America, — in the Brazils, in Peru, and in Chili,—of the English-speaking denizens and mercantile houses ton to one are British. Upon the latter point I do not of course speak with personal knowledge, but by inference from what I do know and from testimony.

The notion that “ the Americans ” are a nation of travelers has sprung chiefly from the largeness of our hotels, and the freedom and ease with which we use them. In former years the greater number of English travelers in England went, except when they were actually en route, to lodgings. It is only of late years that large hotels like ours have been established in the principal English cities; but there, notwithstanding all that has been said of the Englishman’s dislike of hotel life, they are profitable, and seem to be well adapted to the habits of the people. Our large hotels were at first the result of a certain social condition. We had not a class of people who liked to let a part of their own houses to transient lodgers of a class above them. Keeping a hotel or a boarding-house as a business was quite another matter. It was undertaken like any other business, Hence our hotels and boarding-houses, and our free use of them merely as places where we could buy food and rest for a few hours, just as we could buy anything else at any shop, without concerning ourselves about the landlord in one case or the shopkeeper in the other. And this notion of our being so much more given to travel than Englishmen are had its origin many years ago, before railways were, and when we used, even much more than we do now, what Englishmen can never use largely as a means of locomotion, steamboats. A British traveler, finding himself in one of our large riverboats, with one, two, or perhaps three or four hundred people, came not unnaturally to the conclusion that our whole population was constantly moving about in those to him wonderful vessels. He had never seen more than a stage-coach full of fellow-passengers at one time, and the great throng astonished him. But for one traveler in a stage-coach here there were a hundred in England, besides those who traveled post.

However all this may have been, nowadays half England seems to be every day upon the rails. High and low, rich and poor, they spend no small part of their time in railway carriages. Ladies who would not venture themselves in a London cab alone (although that they do now pretty freely) travel by rail unattended, or at most with a maid, who is generally in a second-class carriage while they are in a first. Not only married and middle-aged women do this, but young ladies, even of the higher and the upper-middle classes.² The number of trains that enter and leave London, Liverpool, Birmingham, and other large cities daily is enormous. The great stations in London, of which there are six or seven, like the Victoria, the Charing Cross, and the Euston Street, swarm with crowds at all hours. The entire population of the island seems to be always “ on the go.” And all this is done without bustle or confusion. The Englishman and the Englishwoman of today are so accustomed to travel that they go about upon the rails with no more fuss than in going from the drawing-room to the dining-room, and from the diningroom back into the drawing-room; and this quiet in locomotion is much aided by the perfect system of the railway management, and the comfort with which the whole proceeding is invested. A long train arrives at a great station whence hundreds of people are just about to start. There is no confusion, and the train is emptied, and in five minutes or less all the passengers, with their luggage, are out of the station and on their way homeward.

There has been much dispute as to the comparative convenience of the English and American systems of railway traveling. I give my voice, without hesitation or qualification, in favor of the English. In England a man in his traveling, as in all other affairs of life, does not lose his individuality. He does not become merely one of the traveling public. He is not transmuted, even by that great social change - worker the railway, into a mere item in a congeries of so many things that are to be transported from one place to another with the least trouble to the common carrier. His personal comfort is looked after, his individual wishes are so far as is possible consulted. He arrives at the station with his luggage. One of the company’s porters immediately appears, asks where he is going, and takes his trunks and bags. He buys his tickets, and directed, if he needs direction. by other servants of the company, all of whom are in uniform, he takes his seat in a first-class or secondclass carriage, as he has chosen. He is assisted to find a comfortable place, and, if he appears at all at a loss, is prevented by the attendants from getting into a wrong train or a wrong carriage. For here, as in all similar places in England, there is always some authorized person at hand to answer questions; and the answer is civil and pleasant. His luggage, properly labeled, is placed in a van or compartment in the very carriage in which he takes his seat. For, contrary to the general supposition, first, second, and third class carriages are not distinct vehicles or, as we might say, cars, coupled together in a train. The body of the vehicle on each " truck " is divided into first, second, and third class carriages or compartments; and each one of these composite vehicles has a luggage van. A minute or two before the train is to start a servant of the company, whose particular business it is, goes to the door of every carriage and, examining the tickets of the passengers, sees that each one is properly placed. In more than one instance I have seen the error of an ignorant passenger who had neglected to make the proper inquiries rectified by this precaution, which prevents mistakes that would have proved very annoying. When this has been done the doors are closed but not locked, the word is given “ all right,” and the train starts, and with a motion so gentle that it is hardly perceptible. There is no clanging of bells or shrieking of whistles. The quiet of the whole proceeding is as impressive as its order. And I will here remark that that most hideous of all sounds, the mingled shriek and howl of the steam-whistle, from the annoyance of which we are hardly free anywhere in America, is rarely heard in England. At Morley’s Hotel in London, which is in Trafalgar Square, within a stone’ s-throw of the great Charing Cross station, and where I stopped for some days, I did not once hear, even in the stillness of night, this atrocious sound. On the rails it is rarely heard; and there the noise is not very unpleasant. It is a short, sharp sound, — a real whistle, not a demoniac shriek, or a hollow, metallic roar.

The care that is taken of the safety of passengers is shown by an incident of which I was a witness when going to Canterbury. The way-stations are on both sides of the road. Passengers who are going up take the train on one side; those going down, on the other. The communication between the two sides of the station is either by a bridge above the rails, or by a tunnel under-ground; and no one who is not a servant of the company is allowed to walk on the tracks, or to cross them, under any circumstances whatever. On the occasion to which I refer, a man stepped down from the platform on one side, and was instantly met by a person in uniform who ordered him back. He submitted at once, and then said, good-humoredly, to the station-master, “ I suppose you adopted that regulation because of the accidents that happened.” “No,” replied the other, with a smile; “ we adopted it before the accidents happened.” Here we always wait for the accident.

The carriages are the perfection of comfort. The first-class are in every way luxurious. You are as much at your ease as if you were in a large stuffed arm-chair with a back high enough to support your head as well as your shoulders. The second - class carriages on some of the lines are hardly inferior in real comfort, although they are not so handsomely fitted up; the chief important difference being a diminution of room. But even in the first - class carriages there is no glare of color or of tinsel, no shining ornaments of wood or metal. All is rich and sober; and there are no sharp corners or hard surfaces. The holder of a first-class ticket may ride in a second or a third class carriage if he desires to do so and there is room for him; and I have again and again, on the stopping of the train, gone from one to the other to observe the passengers in each and to talk with them, — for English people are much more talkative and communicative than we are, particularly when they are traveling. In this way I had the pleasure of many long conversations, even with ladies whom I never saw before and whom I shall probably never see again. When a train stops the doors are all immediately thrown open, and if it is at a way-station the passengers give up their tickets as they pass out through the station. If you choose to go beyond the point for which you have bought your ticket, you merely pay the additional fare, for which a receipt is given; doing which causes you no appreciable delay.

When the train reaches its destination it is stopped a short distance from the station, and an officer of the company comes to the door of the carriage and asks for your ticket. Sometimes this is done at the last way-station, if that is very near the end of the line. The train then moves on and quietly enters the station, slowing its gentle movement so gradually that motion insensibly becomes rest. There is no clanging, bumping, or shaking. If you have only your hand-bag and your rug, you step out, and if you do not choose to walk you take the first of the line of cabs in order as they stand, and are off in a minute. If you are in London, and are observant, you will see as you pass the gate that your cabman gives your address to a policeman, who writes it down with the number of the cab, taking a look at you as this is done; but the cab does not perceptibly stop for it, and then is off on a trot. If you have luggage and more than a single trunk, you hold up your finger, and one of the company’s porters is instantly at the carriage window. You tell him to get you a four-wheeler, and give him a bag, a rug, a book, or a newspaper, which he puts into some fourwheeled cab, which is thereby engaged for you. You get out, go with the porter to the luggage van, which is not one of two or three huge cars, full of trunks and boxes, away at the end of the train, but a small compartment just at your side; and the contents are not numerous, of course, as each van has only the luggage of the passengers on one vehicle. You point out your own trunks and boxes, the porter whisks them up to the cab, and in five minutes or less from the time when the train stopped you are trotting off to your house, your lodgings, or your hotel, and all your baggage is with you for immediate use, without the bother of checks and expressmen and a delivery of your baggage at some time within half a day afterwards. If by chance any mistake has been made as to the disposition of your baggage, which happens with extremest rarity, according to my observation, it is discovered at once, and there is the whole force of the company’s porters and higher officers to rectify it, and to search for and produce your property under your own observation; and the thing is done in a few minutes. Police officers are there, too, not lounging or indifferent, but ready, quick, and active to give you protection and help. The result is expedition and the keeping of your property under your own eye, and the having it immediately at your residence. It is customary to give the porter who gets your cab and takes your luggage to it sixpence or fourpence for his trouble.

Nothing is more remarkable on an English railway than the civility of the company’s servants; and this is the more impressive because it does not at all diminish their firmness and precision in obedience to orders. I happened on two occasions to remark this particularly. But before telling my own experience in England I will relate that of another person under similar circumstances in America. A young gentleman, whom I know very well, started from Philadelphia to New York, buying a through ticket. He stopped on the way and remained a night, and the next morning resumed his journey. When he presented his “ coupon ” ticket to the conductor, he was told that it was worthless, as it was dated the day before, and was good only for the day on which it was issued. He insisted that as he had paid to be taken from Philadelphia to New York he had the right to be taken the whole distance, whether he stopped on the way six hours or twenty-four, and he refused to pay the double fare demanded. At the next station the conductor ordered him out of the car. He refused to go, and thereupon the other undertook to remove him; this, even with the assistance of a brakeman, was not found highly practicable, and was given up as a bad job. But when the train reached Trenton the conductor and his assistants entered the car with a man in plain clothes who said that he was an officer, and who arrested the passenger. This officer said that he was commissioned by the governor and also by the mayor of Trenton, but that he was in the employ of the company. The passenger demanded the intervention of the mayor, was able to enforce his demand, and the mayor ordered his immediate release. The matter was then placed in the hands of a lawyer, and I believe has not yet been settled.

Now it so happened that just at that time I was in a precisely similar position in England. The affair being in all its circumstances very illustrative of the difference between the two countries in railway regulations, and in the manners of those who administer them, I shall relate it in detail. While at a Liverpool hotel, close by the station, I had spoken to a porter of the house, who did me some little services, of my intention to go to London in a day or two, stopping at Birmingham for the last day of the great triennial musical festival. On the afternoon when I was to start, I came in belated and in great haste. I had hut twenty minutes in which to pack, pay my bill, buy my ticket, and get off. I sent this porter to get me a second-class ticket. He went, and my luggage was taken in charge by another porter. I reached the train just in time, and the first porter, whom I found standing at a carriage door, handed me my ticket with some silver change, all of which I thrust into my waistcoat pocket without looking at it, and got into the carriage which he had selected for me. The other porter, who had taken my luggage, came to the door, said “ All right, sir,” and we were off. I was so close upon the time of starting that the inquiry as to my destination was made just as the train began to move. To my surprise the ticket examiner said, as I showed him my ticket, which of course I had not yet had time to look at, “ This ticket is for London, sir, and you said Birmingham.” As it proved, the first porter, having heard me speak of going to London, had in his haste forgotten what I said about Birmingham, and had bought me a London ticket. I was immediately in a state of unpleasant doubt as to what my experience would be and what would become of my luggage, for I had been in the country hardly a week. At the first stopping-place I made inquiry of the guard, and was told that the stops were so short that nothing could be done until we reached Stafford, where the train would stop ten minutes. The train had hardly come to a stand-still at Stafford when he made his appearance and took me immediately to a superior official, who, when I had stated my case, said that I must see the station-master; and in less than half a minute that personage appeared before me. He was an intelligent, middle-aged man, very respectable in his appearance, and very respectful in his bearing. The guard told him the case briefly. He ordered the luggage in the van of my carriage to be taken out. It was all turned out, and mine was not found. I was asked to describe it particularly. I did so, and the order was given to take out all the luggage from all the Birmingham and London carriages. It was now quite dark, and the search was made with lanterns; but in two or three minutes, (so many hands were engaged, so quickly did they work, and so little luggage, comparatively, was there in each van) my trunks were found, duly labeled “Birmingham.” The second porter had made no mistake. I then told the station-master that I had intended, as he saw by the labeling of my luggage, to stop at Birmingham, and asked him if with a London ticket I could break my journey for a day. He said that he thought that I might, bade me good evening, and the train started without the delay of a minute. I stopped at Birmingham, stayed two days, and then resumed my journey to London. At a short distance from the Euston Street Station the train halted, and we were asked for our tickets. I gave mine, and the ticket taker, glancing at it as he was moving on, stopped short, and said, “This is aday’s ticket, sir. I cannot take this.” “ You 'll have to take it,” I said, “ for I have no other.” “ Then I must ask you, sir, to pay me your fare from Birmingham.” “ I’ve paid it once, and I certainly shall not pay it twice on this line until I have been taken to London.” “ I beg pardon, sir, but I must positively refuse to take this ticket. It ’s against my orders; and I must ask you for your fare from Birmingham.” I was struck by the man’s respectfulness, civility, and quiet good humor, but none the less by his unflinching firmness; and I answered him with, I believe, equal respect and firmness, “I am sorry, but I shall not pay double fare. I refuse positively.” “Then, sir,” was his reply, “I must ask you for your name and address.” I took out my card, wrote upon it the name of the hotel in London to which I was going, and handed it to him. He touched his cap, saying, “ Thank you, sir. Good evening.” I replied, “ Good evening,” and he passed on. The affair had, of course, attracted much attention from my carriage inmates, one of whom said to me, as the train started again, “I think you ’ll find you ’re wrong. This is a matter the companies are very particular about; I don’t know why; and I believe the question has been decided in their favor; I can’t see why. You’d better write to the general superintendent of the company when you get to London,” and he gave me his name. The next morning I did write, stated my case, received a courteous reply, and the matter was settled quietly, good-naturedly, decently, sensibly, with respect on both sides, and with the least possible trouble. I think so much could not be said of the proceedings in the case of my young friend between Philadelphia and New York, even although he was a resident of New York and was able to give a name and references very well known, and I was a stranger in England and had never been in London.

At the great railway stations such is the throng of travelers ceaselessly passing back and forth, or waiting for trains, accompanied sometimes, in the case of ladies who are going alone, by friends, that these places afford very favorable opportunities for the observation of all sorts of people from all parts of the country, whose superficial traits may be thus conveniently studied and compared. The variety of classes and conditions is great; the difference unmistakable. Here we see nothing like it. True, we can tell Northerners from Southerners, Eastern from Western men, and can distinguish by the outside between a denizen of one of the great cities and one from the rural districts. An observant eye can even detect slight variations between the urban and the suburban man or woman, none the less easily when the latter has her garments carefully made according to the patterns in Harper’s Bazar. But beyond this a close observation of our travelers tells us little. In England, notwithstanding the leveling and assimilating tendencies of the last half century, due largely to the railway itself, the gradation of classes is readily perceptible, even to a stranger’s eye; nor is the condition, or in many cases the occupation, less distinguishable than the class. Agricultural laborers are very rarely seen upon the railway, except when they move in gangs for special work; and then they are quite likely to be Irishmen. The farmers travel much more than I supposed they did, — very much more than they do with us. I met with them and talked with them in second-class cars on every line on which I traveled; for as I have said it was my habit, when alone, to change my place at station and station to second and third class carriages, which I learned that the holder of a first-class ticket might do if the trains were not crowded. I found that my apprehension of their class and condition from their appearance was never wrong; and so it proved (within certain limits, of course) in regard to other classes. Not only are the upper classes, that is, we may say, those who are educated at Eton and Harrow and the two great universities, unmistakable by their bearing and expression of countenance, but among the professional classes a barrister would hardly be taken for a physician, or either of these for a clergyman, or a clergyman for either of those. The London city man, “ commercial person,” is also unmistakable, unless he is one of those highly educated great bankers or merchants which are found in England, but are very rare in America. Such a person might be taken for a peer, unless you were to see him and the peer together, when, with a few “ tip-top ” exceptions on the city side, the difference would manifest itself, if in no other way, by the countenance, if not in the behavior, of the city man himself.

The intermediate classes, commercial travelers, small attorneys, tradesmen, and so forth, have also their distinctive outside and expression, difficult to define in words when dress has come to be so identical in form and color among all classes, but still, as I found it, quite unmistakable. I remember that on one Sunday, when I went to morning service at a little village church with the “ lady of the manor,” I noticed in the choir, close to which her pew was, a man so very earnest in his singing that he attracted my attention. As we walked back through the shubbery, just beyond which the church stood, shut off by a wall through which was a little gate, I spoke to my hostess of this man’s singing, and asked if he was not a carpenter. “ Yes,” she answered, with a look of surprise; “but how did you know that?” (I had come toonly the day before.) “ Oh,” I said, “ I knew that he must be an artisan, for he was plainly neither a farmer nor a laborer; and as he did not look like the village blacksmith or wheelwright, I therefore concluded that he must be a carpenter. And besides, he sawed away so at his singing.” The man’s dress was like that of my host in fashion and material, a black cloth frock and trousers, and they were perfectly fresh and good, and his linen was clean; but the difference of rank and breeding between the two men was as manifest as if the one had worn his coronet, and the other his paper cap and apron. All these various classes are nowhere seen together as they are at the railway stations; for, except the agricultural laborer and the lowest classes in the city, all travel. I therefore never was near a station without entering it and walking about for a while among the people there. A trifling incident at one station, which was connected with a hotel at which I was, interested me. I had gone down to breakfast in my slippers; and when I rose from the table I walked out into the station, from which two or three trains were about starting. As I was quietly eying the motley multitude, I heard a small voice: “Black your shoes, sir? — only a penny; ” and as I did not immediately reply, my attention being fixed upon a group at a little distance from me, the words were repeated, and I turned my head. The speaker was looking up earnestly into my face. I, smiling, pointed down to my slippered feet; and the boy, a goodlooking little fellow, smiled too, but shyly, and, seeing his mistake, blushed to the edges of his hair. Wonder of wonders! thought I. Here is a country in which boys can blush; where boys who speak English and black boots have some shamefacedness in the presence of their elders. The little fellow gained somewhat by my not having a job for him to do; but what he took so joyfully should have been more, by a hundredfold, to acknowledge fitly the pleasure that I had from his shy, glowing face. This was on the 31st of August, and I saw in the station and elsewhere signs of the time unknown in America. There were keepers, with leashes of dogs, going hither and thither to the preserves; for shooting was to begin on the morrow. There was such a fuss and talk about it that one would have thought that it was a matter of life and death to some thousands of gentlemen that they should burn powder and kill birds on that day, and that some other thousands of men, and three or four times as many thousands of dogs, should be promptly on the spot to help them. The dogs were mostly handsome, intelligent animals; the keepers were smallish, tight-built fellows in long gaiters, with a strange mixture of brutality and shrewdness in their faces.

On this same journey I had the good fortune to witness an incident very characteristic of the society in which I was. I took the train at Birmingham at about four o’clock in the afternoon. Although, as I have said, I had a second-class ticket, I entered by mistake a first-class carriage. The grades of the carriages are indicated on the glass of the upper half of the doors; but as the doors were opened and thrown back against the carriage, I did not see “First Class” on the door of the one I entered. When the guard came I said “London,” and put my hand to my pocket for my ticket, and he, supposing I knew my place, nodded his head and passed on. When the train started I was alone in the carriage. When we reached the next station, or the next but one, a party of three, a young gentleman and two ladies, approached the carriage, and one of the ladies entered it and took the seat next me on my left hand, between me and the door, I having one of the middle seats. Her companions appeared to be her brother and sister, or her sisterin-law; and from their talk, which I could not avoid hearing, I learned that she was going a short distance, and was to be met by her husband at the station where she was to stop. When the train began its gentle, almost imperceptible motion, both of them kissed her, — the lady with feminine effusion, but the young gentleman in a perfunctory manner; and when I saw his cool salute, and heard his “ Take care of yourself, old girl,” I was sure he was her brother. No other man having his privilege could have availed himself of it with such indifference. For my carriage companion was a beautiful woman; and her beauty impressed me the more because of its delicate character, and because she was the first really pretty woman of her class that I had yet seen in England. She was just tall enough to be noticeably so, and the noble elegance of her figure could not be concealed by her traveling dress. This was a long garment, of a soft texture and light color between buff and cream, buttoned from the throat to the lower hem with buttons of the same tint as that of the dress. Her hat, or her bonnet, was also of the same material, and was without ornament of any kind. As a bonnet has strings, I believe, and a hat has not, it was probably a hat; for no woman not inhumanly disposed could conceal by a ribbon the inner outline of such a cheek as hers; and she, was not inhuman. In her dainty ears were small dull-gold earrings set with turquoises, which were matched by the brooch which confined a lace frill around her lovely throat. Her eyes were blue, her brow fair; her mouth had the child-like sweetness which Murillo gave to the lips of his Virgins; in expression her face was cherubic. She apparently had no other luggage than a small Russia-leather bag, which she put into the rack above our heads. We sat in silence ; for there was no occasion for my speaking to her, and she looked mostly out of the window. After we had passed one or two stations she took down the little hand-bag, opened it, took out a bottle and a small silver cup, and turning herself somewhat more to the window poured something into the cup and drank it off at a draught. I did not see what she drank; but in an instant I knew. The perfume filled the whole carriage. It was brandy; and the overpowering odor with which I was surrounded told me of the strength of her draught as well as if I had mixed her grog myself, or had joined her in a sociable cup. At this I was not so much astonished as I should have been two or three days before; for at the Birmingham festival I had seen, during the interval between the two parts of a morning performance, potation of the same kind by ladies of whose respectability there could be no question. We went on in silence. After passing one or two more stations we stopped at one — Rugby, I believe — for a little longer time than usual. Soon I was conscious that some persons whom I did not see were about entering the open door, when my angelic beauty sprang from her seat, and placing herself before the door cried out, “ No, you shan't come in! I won't have third-class people in the carriage! ” There was remonstrance which I did not clearly hear, and the people attempted to enter. She then threw her arm across the door-way like a bar, clasping firmly one side of the carriage with a beautiful white dimpled hand. I thought at once of Catherine Douglas; and the Scotch girl, when she thrust her arm through the staples of the door, to keep out the pursuers of her king, could not have been more terribly in earnest. She (my Catherine Douglas) almost screamed out, “ Go back ! go back! You shan’t come in! This is a first-class carriage, and I won’t, have third-class people put into it! ” Then came counter-cries, and there was a hubbub which certainly was of the very first class. She turned her beautiful head to me with an appealing look; but I sat still and made no sign. A guard, or other official person, who accompanied the inferior intruders expostulated with her; and I heard him explain that the train was so full that all the third and even the second class carriages were occupied, and that as these people had their tickets and said they must get on he was obliged to put them into our carriage. It would be for but a little while, only till we reached a certain station. My fair companion was obdurate, and perhaps was a little set up by the contents of the silver cup. But two first-class passengers came in, and as they pleaded for the admission of the luckless third-class people, and the assurances that there was no alternative and that the period of contamination would be brief were repeated, she at last subsided into her seat, still grumbling, and the objectionable persons were admitted.

They certainly were not people with whom it would have been pleasant to sit down to dinner. One, a woman, took the seat on my right, and the other, a coarse, ill-looking fellow, sat himself opposite to her. The face and hands of the woman, sallow and leathery, although she was young, might have been cleaner, and contrasted very unfavorably with the lovely, fair, and fresh complexion of the angry beauty. Her nails were like claws, with long black tips. She had a red woolen comforter around her neck. and her bonnet was a hopeless mass of crumpled ribbons and dingy, flaring flowers. Her companion was the male proper to such a female,—a little less noisome, however; and I have observed that when a woman sets out to be dirty or disagreeable she succeeds better than a man. Immediately a war of words began between the two “ ladies,” and it was fought across me. The beauty repeated her objection to third-class people, and protested that as she had paid for a firstclass place it was a shame that she should be made to travel third class whether she would or no. She with the red comforter wished to know what harm she would do anybody by riding in the same carriage with them, and added, “ Some peepull that coll themselves first-clawss peepull because they paid for a first-clawss ticket might be no better than other peepull that paid for a third-clawss ticket.” A sniff and a toss of the beautiful head. Then she of the comforter: “ As for me, I’m not going to stop in Rugby all night with race-peepull.” (It appeared that there had been races somewhere in the neighborhood of Rugby that day.) “ If peepull were only third-clawss peepull, they could n’t be expected to stop all night in a place wen the ’ole town was filled with only race-peepull.” This proposition seemed to meet with general bland assent from all the company in the carriage; and I was delighted to find that below the deep of common third - class people there was admitted to be still a lower deep, into which third-class people could not be expected to descend. Opposite my fair neighbor now sat a rubicund, well-rounded clergyman, to the establishing of whose local color many gallons of richly-flavored port must have gone. He had not an apron or even a dean’s hat, but either would well have become him. He soothed the fair firstclass being with a mild mixture of sympathy and expostulation. There was a general discussion of the situation, in which every one of my fellow-passengers had something to say; and the impropriety of third-class people being put into contact with first-class people was generally admitted, without the least regard for the presence of her of the red comforter and of her companion. At last I was appealed to; for all the while I had sat silent. I replied, “ Really, I oughtn’t to say anything about the matter ; for I myself am only a second-class passenger out of place.” The beauty turned upon me a stare of surprise, and with a bewildered look “ wilted down ” into her corner. She of the dingy claws and flowers tittered, and the subject was dropped.

After a while the silence was broken by the third-class person’s saying that she wanted to get to a certain place that night, and asking vaguely, of no one in particular, if she could do so. There was no reply at first; after a moment or two I was surprised by hearing the first-class dame say “ Yes,” softly, with a mild surliness, and looking straight before her. Her former foe asked, “ How? ” A shorter pause; then “ Take the train that meets this one at Blisworth Junction,” came from the beautiful lips between the turquoises, the head turned slightly toward the questioner, and the words dropped sidelong. This seemingly announced a treaty of peace; and again to my surprise, and much more to my pleasure, a conversation went on across me, but now in perfect amity, and information as to the minutest particulars was freely asked for with respectful deference, and given with gracious affability.

The fact that my fair neighbor was accompanied to the station by her brother and sister showed that she was what is called “a respectable woman; ” and the manner and speech of the three were those of cultivated people. Moreover, upon reflection I became convinced that she was neither a termagant nor a particularly ill-natured person. She had merely done, in a manner rather unusual, I believe, even in England, and somewhat too pronounced to suit my taste, what it is the habit of the whole people of England to do: she had insisted upon her rights, and resisted an imposition. She meant to have what she had paid for. This is the custom and the manner there. English people are, according to my observation, kind and considerate, noticeably so, and ready to do a service to any one in need of it; but they resist, vi et armis, unguibus et ore, tooth and nail, the slightest attempt to impose upon them; and they do it instantly, upon the spot, and follow the matter up vigorously. The habit is productive of unpleasantness sometimes, and it may cause some disenchantments, but it has its advantages, and they are not small.

Another characteristic of the country is shown in its railway vocabulary. There is, for example, a “guard” or guards on the train, and a “ booking office” at the station. The guard guards nothing, and has nothing to guard. The steam-horse was not only “ vara bad for the coo,” but for the highwayman, who long ago ceased to labor in his vocation. At the “ booking office ” no booking is done. You merely say, to an unseen if not invisible person, through a small hole, “ First (or second) class, single (or return),” put down your money, receive your ticket, and depart. But as there were booking offices for the stage-coaches which used to run between all the towns and through nearly all of the villages of England, the term had become fixed in the minds and upon the lips of this nation of travelers. So it was with the guard and his name; and when the railway carriage supplanted, or rather drove out, the stage-coach, the old names were given to the new things, and the continuity of life was not completely broken. The railway carriages are even now often called coaches. We, however, had traveled so little comparatively, owing in a great measure to the long distances between our principal towns and even between our villages, and stage-coaches were so comparatively rare and so little used, that when the railway engine came, not only they but all connected with them, words as well as men and things, disappeared silently into the past, and left no trace behind. In such continuity on the one hand, and such lack of it on the other, is one of the characteristic differences between the Old England and the New; and its cause, as it will be seen, is not in the unlikeness of the people, but in that of their circumstances.³

Richard Grant White.