O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire and behold our home!
“Sir,” said the Honourable Mister Pigeonbarley of Missouri, “we air a peculiar people. Jes so!”
Have you never noticed how, when travelling on a long journey, the wheels of the railway carriage in which you are sitting seem always to be rattling out some carefully studied tune, to which the jolts of the vehicle beat a concerted bass; while, the slackening of the coupling chains, in combination with the concussion of the buffers as they hitch up suddenly again, sounds a regular obbligato accompaniment—the scream of the steam whistle, and the thundering whish and whirr of the train through a deep cutting or tunnel, or over a bridge with water below, coming in occasionally as a sort of symphony to the main air?
Have you never noticed this?
No? Bless me, what a very unimaginative person you are! I have, frequently; and yet, I do not think I am any brighter than the ordinary run of people.
Drawn some odd thousands of miles by the iron horse, as it has been my fortune to be during different periods of my life, I have seldom failed to associate his progress thus with those lesser Melpomenean nymphs, who may be selected to watch over the destinies of the steam god and fill up their leisure hours by “riding on a rail,” in the favourite fashion of the South Carolinian darkeys.
Of course the carriage wheels do not perpetually sing the same song:—that would be monotonous.
They know better than that, I can assure you. Sometimes they rattle out the maddest of mad waltzes—such as that which the imprudent German young lady, living near the Harz Mountains, found herself dancing one day against her will, when she had given expression to the very improper statement, that, she would “take the devil for a partner,” if he only would put in an appearance at the gay and festive scene at which she was then present. Sometimes, again, they will evolve, note by note, the dreariest air that the composer of the Dead March in Saul could have devised; or, croon you out a soothing lullaby, should you feel sleepy, to which the charming melody of “The Cradle Song” would bear no comparison. In fact, the nymphs know their work well; and so alter their strains as to suit every mood and humour of the variously-tempered travellers that listen to their musical cadences.
As I proceeded now on my way to Southampton, where I was to take the ocean steamer for my passage to America, the railway nymphs were busy with their harmonies.
Not sad or dispiriting by any means, but briskly enlivening was their lay.