Material Faith.
Give me a God whom I can prove
By certain academic rules,
Approved by all the learned schools;
And if he fitteth not our groove,
We'll leave him for unscienced fools
To idolize.
But if his attributes should be
All classed within high Reason's bound—
His origin and parts be found
With analytics to agree—
This God, whom we can solve and sound,
We'll patronize.
But still our right we will reserve—
A sacred privilege of Science—
To herald forth our non-compliance
With Scriptural accounts that swerve
From our grand basis; such defiance
We'll not endure.
We'll rule out the creation chapter;
'Tis so absurd! and lacks support
Of brilliant sages in our court
Whose own hypotheses are apter.
So exit Moses' crude report
For something newer.
The Bible we will not reject
In toto; no, we'll let it stand,
Lest our fair fame should bear a brand;
But when we've banished ev'ry sect,
Then forth we'll drag from Lethe's sand
Our fossil link!
Completing the material chain
By philosophic labor wrought,
And beaten out by mighty thought!
Eureka! what a motley train
Of dry bones, labelled to a jot,
Round Learning's brink!
Such wondrous titles ne'er were heard
In all the mythologic lore!
We'll drape in gloom of Stygian shore
All held as truth; and at our word
Darkness, in cloak of Light, shall soar
To Reason's throne!
Then, when this wheeling globe is ours,
We'll send God forth a wand'ring myth
Void, and bereft of son, or kith:
And stone-eyed fossils, robed in flowers,
From sea of spice to frozen frith,
Shall teach alone.
A Glimpse of the Green Isle. I.
“What the lady wants, sir, is hair,” said Edward.
“Hair!” I repeated scornfully, at the same time glancing at the wealth of dark-brown hair which fell dishevelled over the shoulders of the Lady from Idaho. “Hair!”
It was evident that no comb had touched that wonderful chevelure for several days.
“I shall never be able to comb it out again,” said the Lady from Idaho in a weak, despairing voice. She lay on a sofa in a state-room on board the transatlantic steamer Lima, from New York to Liverpool, calling at Queenstown. She had been terribly sea-sick. During seven days she had not eaten enough to keep a buffalo-gnat alive.
“I don't mean ‘air,’ sir,” said Edward, raising his nose to an altitude of 45°, with the lofty dignity of your true English waiter. “I means hair—wentilation.”
“Ah! yes. I believe you are right, Hedward.”
Hedward was a steward on board the Lima, to whose fostering care the writer was entrusted.
The Lady from Idaho had reached that point of sea-sickness when one does not want the trouble even of getting better. We carried her on deck, however, and laid her, well wrapped up, on one of the cushioned seats. The circular horizon of many days was being broken by the Irish coast just coming into view. The mere sight of land seemed to revive the fair Idaho traveller. As we neared the coast, and the green of the fields and trees could be seen, she said:
“Oh! what a goodly sight. What a beautiful country! I could chant its praises with the most enthusiastic Irishman of them all!”
We feasted our eyes on the beautiful coast until darkness fell upon it and its outline was marked for us only by the lights which traced the curves of the shore.
We exchange rocket-signals with the shore and with other steamers lying in the bay. The land-breeze has set the Lady from Idaho on her feet again. The tug comes alongside to take the mails and those passengers who wish to land at Queenstown. All is bustle and excitement. There are regretful leave-takings between fellow-passengers whom the traditional “stand-offishness” of English-speaking people prevented from enjoying each other's society until it was almost time to part. Among those who go on shore at Queenstown are the Lady from Idaho—poor seasick [pg 409] soul! she would have gone on shore days ago, if she could have found any shore to go on; a young Irishman bringing his American bride home for inspection by his friends in “the Black North”; some American ladies and gentlemen making their first European tour, evidently determined to be pleased with everything they see; some specimens of young and infant America, and the writer.
There's not much provision for the comfort of passengers on board the tug. The night is rather moist, but the cabin is “stuffy” and ill-ventilated, and we prefer remaining on deck.
The “Cove of Cork” is certainly a beautiful place by day or night. But the night effect is the finer, me judice. The rows of lights rising above each other, tier on tier, on the heights, cast a magic glamour over the scene.
The tug has reached her dock. The custom-house officers have come on board. Horrid moment! Worse, however, in anticipation than in reality, everywhere except on the trans-Atlantic docks of New York City.
“Have you any cigars or tobacco?”
“No.”
“Any firearms?”
“No, sir,” I answer, and inwardly bless my stars that my better and more sensible half has left behind, for lack of room, the “six-shooter” which I carried for ten years in the free land of the West. What a piece of luck! I have been assured by Irish friends that had I brought that unhappy “six-shooter” with me, I should most undoubtedly have been arrested for some undefined bloody intentions with regard to that most susceptible animal, the lion of Great Britain. The lion would have been very much mistaken; for never were the Irish shores visited by any one whose heart was more full of peace and good-will.
Ireland is not a safe place for any one who has a trans-Atlantic odor about him during a Fenian paroxysm. The possession of a pocket derringer is sufficient evidence of belligerent intentions. New-York-made boots are objects of suspicion, and in times of excitement have been the cause of trouble to the wearer. As harmless and commercial an article as a wooden nutmeg, carried merely as a patriotic souvenir, may entail considerable annoyance on its possessor, and perhaps necessitate the good offices of his consul to enable him to pursue his tourist path of pleasure or business in peace. In such periods as anti-Fenian frenzy, English ports are the safest and pleasantest; for in Ireland, then, the lion is rampant, roaring and seeking whom he may devour. It is better to keep away from his super-serviceable retainers in Ireland.
But the political horizon is unclouded. The bloody-minded revolutionists of the pen and inkstand are quiescent for the nonce. We find the officials kind and polite. They opened only one of our trunks. They gave its contents merely a cursory inspection, and chalked cabalistic characters on all our boxes, portmanteaus, satchels, etc. They fished for no fee, nor was any offered them.
It is nearly midnight when we leave the tug. We step ashore. After a quarter of a century of absence, my foot is upon my native heath. My name is not MacGregor, dear reader, nor is it Micawber.
I do not think people feel much at the moment that anything happens [pg 410] to them. It is either before or after; in anticipation or retrospection. In describing their sensations, they tell us what they suppose they are going to feel, or what they think they ought to have felt. I have stood bare-headed by the grave of Washington at Mount Vernon. I believe the man and his work to be among the greatest that ever blest the world. What did I feel? A kind of sorrowful, reverential, awe-struck mental numbness; then a sad yet selfish pity for my kind, who, however good and great they be, e'en to this favor must they come at last. I could not have distinctly shaped a thought or given expression to any of the ideas which a visit to the grave of Washington might be supposed to suggest to a conventionally susceptible imagination. Yet my eyes were full of tears. In the evening, however, in a comfortable room at Willard's, in an easy-chair by a cheerful fire, in the pleasant ease of slippers and cigars, with a quire of thick, white, unglazed letter-paper before me, any kind of steel pen (I hate a gold pen for literary work; it has a counting-house suggestiveness that seems to disagree with the muses), with mayhap a modicum of vin chaud at my elbow, what pages of “Thoughts suggested by a visit to the grave of Washington” I could have “knocked off”! But unluckily Jones rushed in with the sad news that poor Thompson had been killed on the other side of the river, and drove all the intended “Thoughts” out of my head. There is no real present. We have only the past and the future.
The debarkation of a number of ladies, children, trunks, boxes, and carpet-bags is not generative of the softer emotions. The night is damp and chilly. It has reached the wee sma' hours. There is no omnibus or hack to take us to the hotel. Some night-birds, with low, flat caps and Corkonian accents, offer to carry our luggage and show us the way to the hotel. It is “only a step or two.” The cortége sets out for the hotel. Corkonian youngsters—who ought to have been in their beds, if they had any beds to go to—come suddenly out of the darkness, and ask, with wonderful chromatic elocution, the privilege of carrying our satchels. It is useless to tell them we do not need their assistance. They will not be denied. They keep up their chromatics until we succumb. Well, it is sixpence each for them—a treble, or American, gratuity. An American, native or adopted, to whom, especially if he have lived in the West, “a quarter” seems the lowest gratuity that he can offer to the negro who blacks his boots in a sleeping-car, feels an impulse of lavishness on touching Irish ground. He “feels good,” and wishes to make all around him partake of the feeling. Half a dollar seems the least that he can offer the waiter at the hotel with justice to his own dignity and that of the country he has the honor to represent. He is not always so generous when he returns at the end of his tour, and the gratuity system of Britain has disgusted him and helped to deplete his purse. Then he comes down to the smallest silver coin in his portemonnaie. He cannot offer coppers, and never gets as low as the Englishman's “tuppence.”
The English and the Irish in Ireland inveigh bitterly against the American propensity to give extravagant douceurs. They say that Americans are spoiling their waiters, porters, servants, etc. They [pg 411] call this liberality snobbishness, desire to display! The fact is, it is partly a matter of habit, partly a want of knowledge of the comparative values of “tips” at home and abroad. What American from the further side of the Mississippi expects to get anything for a penny? Add to this, what I before remarked, that the American in Ireland “feels good,” and wants to scatter around all the good he can.
Well! here we are at the hotel. A somewhat stupefied porter receives us. He has to see somebody before he can inform us as to the probability of entertainment. He has not indicated any room where the ladies and children can sit and take the night-chill off while we await the result of his conference with Mr. or Mrs. Boniface. We remain standing in the entry, our carpet-bags and wraps in our hands. At length the comatose porter returns, and says that bed-rooms are ready for us!
“Can we have any supper?”
“No, sir. The cook's gone home, sir.”
“Not a cup of tea?”
“No, sir. It's too late, sir.”
“At least, we can have some hot Irish whiskey-punch?”
“No, sir. There's no hot wather in the house, sir.”
“Is there any cold water in the house?”
“Of coorse there is, sir,” replies our negative Amphitryon, slightly roused by the question.
“Then bring me some Irish whiskey and cold water.”
“Yes, sir, I'll thry, sir. I'll see if the bar-maid isn't asleep, sir, and get the key from her, sir.”
We were then presented with one-third of a tallow candle each, and marshalled to our respective sleeping-apartments. No chance of a little pleasant chatter and some gentle exhilaration on our first night on Irish soil.
We sleep pretty well, however, and pretty long into the forenoon of the next day. Waiter comes to say that we can have breakfast in the coffee-room whenever we desire it. This is a delicate hint that we are not early risers. He wants to know when we wish breakfast and of what we wish it composed.
“Chops and tomato-sauce, ham and eggs—”
“Yes, sir. Rashers and eggs, sir.”
“Beefsteak, tea, and coffee, in half an hour.”
Raining! The view of the bay is rather cheerless. Everything looks dankish, dingy, and dull.
“Can you realize that you are in I Ireland?” I inquire of the Lady from Idaho.
“Not in the least,” responds the most amiable of her sex. “Can you?”
“No, indeed.”
It is not a good morning for the interchange of ideas. Misty mornings never are. As for certain projected “Thoughts on touching Irish soil after twenty-five years' absence,” their suggesting themselves under such a murky sky is out of the question. They will have to wait for the bright, creative sun. Perhaps, after a good warm breakfast, one may be able to think some “Thoughts,” if the railway time-tables will admit of it.
The “coffee-room” of “the best hotel” is cold and cheerless. Smoke without fire is obtained from some wet coal-dust, economically caked, according to the mode of thrifty housekeepers in the British Isles, in an infinitesimal grate in a remote corner of the room. Impossible to think any “Thoughts” here. Some solemn-looking men, [pg 412] very particular about their chops—I mean their mutton-chops—are enjoying—or, more correctly, consuming, for there is no evidence of enjoyment—their morning meal.
Our breakfast is not a bad one. The chops are excellent; the beefsteak, so-so. I have eaten better beef in New York. The bread is hard and heavy, but white and not ill-tasted. I wish the Irish and English waiters would adopt the short alpaca jacket and long white apron of the waiters of Paris and New York. It is a much neater and cleaner costume. The greasy full-dress coat and limp, whity-brown neck-cloth are not only absurd; they are often disgusting.
Still raining! The sidewalks are hid from view by the thickly-passing umbrellas. Let us go and buy some umbrellas! Life seems to be impossible without them here. In the three kingdoms, umbrellas are indispensable to respectability.
“I hate respectability,” said the Lady from Idaho with a vicious emphasis.
I was rather astonished by this outburst, but I reflected that allowance must be made for ladies' tempers on draggle-tail mornings.
“Such weather,” I remarked, “is enough to make one hate anything.”
“It is not that,” she retorted. “I hate respectability, rain or shine.”
“Des goûts et des couleurs—you know the old proverb.”
“There is nothing more selfish, more hypocritical, more cowardly, than ‘respectability.’ ”
“My dear madam, I did not take the trouble of coming from the other side of the Rocky Mountains for the purpose of chopping logic. I must buy umbrellas.”
I bought me an umbrella. Thenceforward I was only separated from it during sleep and meals while I remained in the British Islands. It was almost always necessary. The wretch who sold it to me, however, saw that I wore overshoes, and charged me about three Irish prices. I feel certain that the day will come when he will be fitly punished. He will emigrate to the United States sooner or later, and the hackmen or restaurateurs of New York will avenge me!
Steam is a wonderful leveller. It is destroying national costume and toning down national peculiarities. The same round hat which was worn in New York when I left is worn in Queenstown; the same fashion of winter overcoat. The up-and-down-the-gamut intonations of the Cork brogue, however, bring you to a consciousness of your true latitude and longitude. The long, hooded cloth cloaks of the peasant women have some suggestions of nationality about them. Occasionally, too, a girl of seventeen or eighteen with bare feet and short kirtle is seen. This is characteristic.
“Buy a bunch of Irish shamrocks from me, sir? Now, do, sir, if ye plase.”
We cannot refuse. We lay in a plentiful supply of the chosen leaf of bard and chief.
“Long life to you, sir, and to the purty ladies and the beautiful childer, and all the blessings in the world on ye. May ye never know what it is to want anything for them!”
The shamrocks alone were not dear; but with such a prayer added, we felt as if we were taking the poor woman's stock in trade for nothing.
As a matter of course, I expected to find Ireland rather backward [pg 413] as regards women's rights and that sort of thing. I was somewhat surprised, therefore, on entering the telegraph office, to find a telegraphist of the gentler sex. She seemed to be quite a business young lady—quick, intelligent, and polite. With the least possible display of conscious superiority, she instructed me in the mode of filling those absurd British blanks for my first British telegrams. With the condescending gentleness of an amiable “school-marm” instructing a good boy of unfortunately limited knowledge and capacity, she “posted” me in the names and location of streets in Dublin. She was industrious as well as intelligent. She had brought her knitting. During our conversation, she doubly improved the shining hour by rolling into a ball a skein of worsted which a most serious and attentive young lady of eight or nine summers held distended on her outstretched and uplifted hands.
The hotel at which we stopped was managed by women. I afterwards remarked, in my trip through the island, that the internal economy of most of the hotels in Ireland is under female direction. The post-offices and postal-telegraph offices are very generally managed by women. There are numerous institutions for the care of aged, sick, or destitute women, or for the rescue and reformation of the poor erring sisters who have been led away from the paths of purity and peace.
“I really believe, after all,” said the Lady from Idaho to me one day, in conversation on this subject, “that they take better care of their women than we do.”
We take the cars for Cork. We ride to the “beautiful city” through the loveliest bit of landscape on which the sun ever shone, or, more appositely, on which the gentle rain from heaven ever fell. It is indeed a land of loveliness and song. The good-natured guard, having remarked our overshoes doubtless, puts his face to the car-window, and enthusiastically asks:
“Well, sir, an' isn't this a counthry worth fightin' for?”
Confound the fellow! even though he be bright-faced and seems good-natured. I wish those people who are eternally talking about fighting and never doing it—except among themselves—would stop talking, or, if they cannot do anything better, go out, take a good “licking” manfully, and be done with it. Daring and doing, even if one gets the worst of it, is better than loud talking and nothing doing. I hate the vox et præterea nihil. We have had too much of it.
“Faith,” says the guard, “it's the fine, healthy-looking childer ye've got. Shure, they don't look like Yankee childer at all, at all.”
“If by Yankee you mean American, my friend, that they undoubtedly are,” replies the gentleman responsible for the little responsibilities who are too healthy-looking to be like “Yankee childer”; “but they come from ayont the Mississippi, which may account in some degree for their hardy appearance.”
“What town is that on the other side of the water?”
“Passage, sir.”
Passage! Shade of “Father Prout”! How often have we rolled our tongues in luscious enjoyment around thy roaring lyric in praise of that wonderful borough!
“The town of Passage
Is large and spacious,
And situated
Upon the Lay;
It's nate and dacent,
And quite convanient
To come from Cork
On a summer's day.
Unfortunately, it is not exactly the kind of a day that one would like
“to slip in,
To take a dippin'
Fornint the shippin'
That at anchor ride;
Or in a wherry
Cross o'er the ferry
To Carrigaloe
On the other side;”
for it still rains, and Carrigaloe is upon our side, as a sign-board and the voice of the guard informs us: “Carrigaloe!”
We shall not have an opportunity of testing the reliability of the poet's promise that
“land or deck on,
You may surely reckon,
Whatever country
You come hither from,
On an invitation
To a jollification
With a parish priest
That's called ‘Father Tom.’ ”
The guard blows his whistle. We leave Passage and its satellite, Carrigaloe, behind, and with them the pleasant vision of a cheerful evening with the hospitable and large-hearted ecclesiastic of the inimitable song.
Not in this wide world is there a lovelier piece of landscape than that between Queenstown and Cork. Here the Lee is bordered by lovely lawns of the freshest green, sloping gently to the water's edge. Further on it flows between verdurous walls of lofty trees. The leaves of their drooping branches kiss the rippling current as it passes. Yonder the Castle of Blackrock frowns over its gently-flowing tide. The grass and the leaves are green with a vivid greenness that justifies all that the poets have sung about the Emerald Island. What glory in thy long, green vistas, beautiful Glanmire!
Our road is bordered on one side by the river; on the other, rich demesnes, bounded by trees, ivy-covered walls, and moss-covered rocks, from which fall miniature cascades and waves the green and graceful fern.
The landscape needs only one modest charm to make its loveliness complete. I miss the humble cottage, lowly yet lovely, where honest labor finds its comfort and repose. There are rich mansions and umbrageous groves and broad pastures, but no smoke ascends from cheerful hearths of tillers of the soil. The peasantry, whose cottages might grace these lovely glades, are building themselves new homes on the broad prairies of the West. The humble wooden sheds or the rough cabins on the brown and treeless plains, sacred to the Lares of independence and self-reliance, are far lovelier in the eyes of the lover of his kind than thy greenest glades, beautiful Glanmire!
“A bold peasantry, their country's pride,
If once destroyed, can never be supplied.”
Here is the beautiful city. It does not do itself justice to-day. The rain, which softens and freshens the beauties of the country, blackens and bedraggles the town. “God made the country, and man made the town.”
But what are those deep, soft tones that reach us through the humid air? Can it be? Yes, there is no doubt about it. We are listening to
“The bells of Shandon
That sound so grand on
The pleasant waters
Of the river Lee!
“I've heard bells tolling
Old Adrian's mole in,
Their thunders rolling
From the Vatican;
“And cymbals glorious
Swinging uproarious
From the gorgeous turrets
Of Notre Dame;
“But thy sounds are sweeter
Than the dome of Peter
Flings o'er the Tiber,
Pealing solemnly.
“Oh! the Bells of Shandon
Sound far more grand on
The pleasant waters
Of the river Lee!”
Cork, with its fine bridges crossing the branches of the Lee, might, under bright atmospheric effects, lay claim to its antique designation; but, amid mud and rain, the most enthusiastic traveller can see no extraordinary beauty even in Paris itself. Church spires and buildings darkened by the rain have a gloomy look. Even the church of S. Anne, which may fairly be said to have “two sides to it”—one being of differently-colored stone from the other—has had its peculiar claims to the traveller's attention somewhat weakened by the effect of the rain.
We have concluded to wend our way quietly toward Dublin, taking in our route anything that may be of interest. The Great Southern and Western Railway runs through one of the most beautiful districts in Ireland. A long panorama of beautiful and characteristic scenes is unrolled as you steam along. Green hedges and slopes, furze-covered fences, century-old trees covered with moss and ivy, rippling streams, a ruined abbey or dismantled tower, bits of soft blue appearing through slate-colored clouds—the humid atmosphere toning down all harsh lines, and yet spreading a sweet though melancholy softness over all—this limited by the gentle undulations of the ground, whose beautiful curves give life to the landscape, yet circumscribe its horizon, and you have the peculiar characteristics of an Irish landscape.
There is an air of solidity about the track and its accessories to an eye habituated to trans-Mississippi railroads. Very pretty are those stations of stone, covered with green ivy, every foot of space in front of them devoted to the culture of some sweet, simple flowers. The Lady from Idaho, who has recently been dipping her gentle nose into the cryptogamia, is in ecstasies over the magnificent ferns we have passed at various points of our route.
For an excellent railway dinner, let me recommend Limerick station to the traveller. The best railway breakfast I have ever eaten—and I have eaten not a few in both hemispheres—I ate at Altoona, on the Pennsylvania Central. It was twelve years ago, however. The best railway dinner I have ever eaten I had at Limerick Junction. It would have done credit to many a pretentious hotel on either continent. It surpassed the menu of private hotels in London, “patronized by officers of both services and their families.” It was a better meal than I have had at what is considered one of the best hotels in Northern Germany, and did not cost half so much. It was well and comfortably served, malgré the ponderous solemnity of the British style of hotel attendance, which to me is a terrible bore. Plenty of time was allowed us to eat and enjoy our meal. Some jovial young gentlemen at the table politely caused champagne to be offered us, in compliment to our trans-Atlantic character. They insisted, as far as politeness would admit, on regaling us; but we declined indulgence in the lively beverage. Sparkling wines are not good to travel on. One of the gentlemen was fascinated by a [pg 416] specimen of infantine America—a member of our party, and one of its most important members, by the way. The champagne, probably, had a softening effect on the gentleman. He lamented his childless condition, and expressed his readiness to give fabulous amounts for the little Columbian stranger. The father of the latter good-humoredly told the gentleman that Young America, white or black, is out of the market, and has been so for some years.
The bell rings. We resume our seats in the train. We have a carriage to ourselves. The guard told us, on leaving Cork, that he would try to keep us alone. This means that he wants a gratuity at the journey's end; for your conductor, or “guard,” on European railways is not above taking a shilling or a sixpence. He shall have it, so far as we are concerned.
The manner of starting a train is good. The bell rings—signal to the passengers to take their seats. There are two guards, one in front and one in rear, each supplied with a whistle. They look along the train to see that the doors of all the compartments are closed. The forward guard, seeing all right at his end, blows his whistle. The rear guard, to make assurance doubly sure, glances along the entire train, and, finding everything in readiness, whistles. The second whistle is the signal to the engineer, who then sounds the steam-whistle, and the train starts.
The trains generally exceed ours in rapidity, but are very much behind them in comfort and elegance. There is no drinking-water in the English or Irish carriages. There are no stoves to keep one warm in cold weather or during the chilly hours of the night. If the weather is cold, tin foot-warmers, filled with water which is not always warm, are furnished in the proportion of one to two first-class passengers. There is no luxurious sleeping-car, where you can sleep comfortably, awake refreshed, find your boots ready blacked when you get up, and wash yourself at a marble wash-stand. No comfortable hotel-car, into which you can step from the sleeping-car in your slippers, and enjoy your beef-steak and fried potatoes, or your quail on toast, at the rate of thirty miles an hour.
In consequence of the absence of arrangements for personal comfort on trains, the British traveller is obliged to weight himself down and half fill his compartment with rolls of railway rugs, bottles of water, and plethoric lunch-baskets, to his own great inconvenience, as well as that of his fellow-travellers. The trouble caused by the want of a proper system of baggage transportation compels the traveller to carry huge leather portmanteaus about five times as large as an ordinary American travelling-satchel. As these are considered “parcels that can be carried in the hand,” the traveller is allowed to take them into the carriage with him. By this means he avoids the trouble of watching the “luggage-van” at junctions, and the delay of waiting for its unloading at the terminus. Then come bundles of umbrellas and canes strapped together, and the leather hat-box—that inseparable adjunct of British respectability. Behold the unprotected matron, surrounded by half a dozen family jewels, with any quantity of wraps and lunch-baskets, and bottles and umbrellas, and band-boxes and multitudinous matters wrapped up in endless newspaper packages! How she glares at you [pg 417] when you step as carefully as you can among the formidable piles to three square inches of a seat in the interior corner! Woe be to him who displaces one of the parcels sacred to family use. I might be able to stand a Gorgon, but I could not stand that. Please do not put me in the carriage with the matron! Rather in the van with the untamable hyena, Mr. Guard, if you please!
Imagine a succession of Broadway omnibuses, with windows and doors at either end, placed laterally behind an engine, and you have an European railway train. Half the passengers necessarily sit with their backs to the engine. The first-class carriages are upholstered in cloth or plush like hackney coaches. The benches are divided into two double seats on each side, giving seats for eight passengers in each compartment. The compartment is lighted by a small and generally dim and smoky oil-lamp placed in the roof.
In the second-class carriages the seats are not divided. Six persons are supposed to be accommodated on each bench. On some lines the seats are very thinly cushioned with leather; generally, they are not cushioned. In France and Belgium the second-class carriages are cushioned and backed with gray cloth, and the difference in comfort between them and the first-class carriages is not worth the difference of fare. This is about one-third greater for first-class tickets. Twelve persons, with a proportionate quantity of wraps, bundles, baskets, bottles, umbrellas, and portmanteaus, pack a compartment pretty closely. Your European traveller makes as much preparation for a trip of sixty miles as an American would for an all-rail journey from New York to San Francisco. An American railroad car is quite a cheerful “institution”; whereas travelling seems to be a more serious business on the other side of the Atlantic. A compartment—first or second class—is a gloomy place. In first-class carriages, the “swells” and snobs are afraid to imperil their dignity by risking intercourse with somebody who may be “nobody.” The result is silence and solemnity. In second-class carriages you often find very pleasant people—clergymen, professional men, young tourists, artists, and students—who can talk pleasantly and well, and have no snobbish, conventional dread of doing so.
It is a common saying in England that only fools and Americans travel first-class. I have heard of a crusty old Irish peer, who, being asked why he always travels third-class, replied that he does so because “there is no fourth class.” I think the venerable lord was rather ostentatious of his humility. I would not advise any of my American friends to try third-class travelling in England or Ireland. A third-class car is a cold, dirty, noisome place. It is full of tobacco-smoke and the smell of strong drinks of various kinds. It is worse than the forward car on a prairie railroad, filled with immigrants and “railroad hands.”
Mail trains are generally composed of first and second class carriages only. Class distinctions meet us everywhere. We find a first and second class waiting-room, first and second class restaurant, third-class waiting-room and third-class restaurant. The waiting-rooms are separate for each sex in each class. You are parted from your wife, sister, or sweetheart. If you have something [pg 418] of importance to communicate to your fair companion, and should appear near the door of the ladies' waiting-room for that purpose, a pre-Raphaelite female, armed with a broom, throws herself into the breach, and fiercely demands your business, while she reduces you almost to a jelly by a Gorgon glare.
To Be Continued.