Here, as well as in the hotels, and in all conditions of American life, you are at the mercy of servants. There is no remedy at hand, no appeal against it.
The car conductors are generally impolite, even rude. Do not ask them questions—above all, those questions which travellers are wont to ask: "Shall we soon be at——?" "Is the train late?" "What is the next station?" etc. In America you are supposed to know everything, and no one will help you unless you should happen to address yourself to well-bred people.
If you ask a passer-by in the street the nearest way to the station, he makes as though he understood you not. The word station is English; but you must talk American here, and say depôt, pronounced deepo.
When a railway servant has succeeded in insulting you, he is quite proud, and plumes himself on his smartness; he looks at his mates and seems to say, "Did you hear how I spoke up to him?" He would be afraid of lowering himself by being polite. In his eyes, politeness is a form of servility; and he imagines that, by being rude to well-bred people, he puts himself on a footing with them, and carries out the greatest principle of democracy—equality. Just so agreeable, obliging, and considerate as is the cultivated American; just so rude, rough, and inconsiderate is the lower-class one.
You go to a railway ticket-office to book for a certain place. Perhaps there are several lines of railway running to your destination. The clerk says, without looking at you, and at the rate of a thousand words a minutes:
"What line? B. and O., or S.F. and W, R.R., or C.I.L. and C.?"
"I want a ticket for Chicago."
"I ask you whether you wish to go by the——"
Here he once more repeats various parts of the alphabet, casting a look of pity at you the while. Do not believe he will translate his A B C D's into English—it is your place to understand them.
Do not lose your temper, however; that never pays in America. The natives would only enjoy it. Take the matter laughingly. This is the advice the Americans gave me; and I recommend it to you, if ever you are similarly placed.