A BRIDE’S LOST LUGGAGE.
The trouble which is bestowed by railway companies to cause the restitution of lost property is incalculable. Some years ago, a young lady lost a portmanteau from the rest of her luggage—a pardonable oversight, for she was a bride starting on a honeymoon trip. The bridegroom—never on such occasions an accountable being—had not noticed the misfortune. When the loss was discovered, and application made respecting it, the lady spoke positively of having seen it at the station whence they started, then again at a station where they had to change carriages; she saw it also when they left the railway; it was all safe, she averred, at the hotel where they stopped for a few days. She was also certain that it was among the rest of the “things” when they again started for a watering-place; but, when they arrived there, it was missing. It contained a new riding habit, value fifteen pounds. The search that was instituted for this portmanteau recalled that of Telemachus for Ulysses; the railway officials sent one of their clerks with a carte blanche to trace the bride’s journey to the end of the last mile, till some tidings of the strayed trunk could be traced. He went to every station, to every coach-office in connection with every station, to every town, to every hotel, and to every lodging that the happy couple had visited. His expenses actually amounted to fifteen pounds. He came back without success. At length the treasure was found; but where? At the by-station on another line, whence the bride had started from home a maiden. Yet she had positively declared, without doubt or reservation, that she had, “with her own eyes,” seen the trunk on the various stages of her tour; this can only be accounted for by the peculiar flustration of a young lady just plunged into the vortex of matrimony. The husband paid the whole of the costs.
THIRD-CLASS PASSENGERS.
The conveyance of passengers at cheap fares was from the commencement of railways a great public concern, and it was soon found necessary that the legislature should take action in the matter. Accordingly, by the Regulation of Railways Act, 1844, all passenger railways were required to run one train every day from end to end of their line, carrying third-class passengers at a rate not exceeding one penny a mile, stopping at all stations, starting at hours approved by the Board of Trade, travelling at least twelve miles an hour, and with carriages protected from weather. This enactment greatly encouraged the poorer classes in railway travelling; but the companies were slow to carry out the new regulations cheerfully. The trains were timed at most inconvenient hours; to undertake a journey of any considerable length in one day at third-class fare was almost out of the question. In fact, a short-sighted policy of doing almost everything to discourage third-class travelling was adopted by the Companies.
A traveller having started on a long journey, thinking to be able to travel all the way third-class, would find at some stage of the route that he had arrived, only a few minutes perhaps, after the departure of the cheap train to his destination, with no alternative but to wait for hours or proceed by the express and pay accordingly. Moreover, the third-class carriages were provided with the very minimum of comfort. It was not seen by the railway executive of that time that the policy adopted was actually prejudicial to their own interests.
Our Railways, by Joseph Parsloe.