These utterances seemed to be more a matter of form than anything else, as the kissing went on like a company of infantry engaged in file-firing. You would have imagined that a whole flock of school-girls had met another flock of school-girls, from whom they had been separated at least six months.
By and by the train came out of the tunnel.
The gentleman recovered his hat and pretended to be reading his newspaper; he had it upside down, and it was torn, half through. The lady’s book was open at about the first page, though she had been reading it for three hours. Her hair had been loosened, and was falling down. Her lace collar was disordered, and quite in keeping with the collar of her masculine friend, one side of which was turned up like the toe of an old boot, while his neck-tie had lost its trim knot, and its ends were dangling like a pair of fish lines over the side of a ship. The gentleman and lady were very red in the face, and somewhat exhausted, and altogether they looked like a pair of butterflies that had been run through a sausage machine.
AN UNHAPPY FRENCHMAN.
A story is told of a Frenchman travelling in a railway coach in England, who was very anxious to change his shirt in order to make a visit after the train had arrived, without taking the trouble to go to a hotel. His guide-book indicated a tunnel on the road, and he asked the guard or conductor how long the train would be in the tunnel. The guard mistook his question, and supposed he asked how long before the train would reach the tunnel. He answered briefly, “Half an hour.”
The coach in which the Frenchman was travelling was filled with ladies and gentlemen. The traveller got down his valise, unlocked it, and made everything ready for a change of apparel while they were in the tunnel. As soon as they entered it he pulled off his shirt, and prepared to put on a clean one; but imagine his surprise, and that of his companions, on discovering that the train remained only three minutes in the tunnel, instead of thirty. As they came out in open daylight he was standing in their midst in a condition quite unfit for a mixed company of ladies and gentlemen.
The longest railway tunnel in the United States, is the Hoosac Tunnel, in Massachusetts. Its total length is twenty-four thousand five hundred feet, or more than four and one-half miles. Its width is eighteen feet, and its depth fourteen feet. As long ago as 1825, the Hoosac Tunnel route was surveyed, and a legislative commission was appointed to investigate the practicability of building a canal from Boston to the Hudson River. They made their report, in which they recommended a tunnel through the mountain.
In 1828 another commission reported to the legislature of Massachusetts that they could get over the mountain with a railway more quickly and more cheaply than through it, and recommended the Boston and Albany line, which was opened for travel in 1842.
From Boston to the Hudson River the route by way of the Hoosac Mountain is very feasible, with the exception of the mountain itself.
A story is told that Loammi Baldwin, the engineer who made the first survey for the canal, was very much in favor of this route. With a map or plan spread before him, he would say to the listener, “Why, sir, it seems as if the finger of Providence had marked out this route from the east to the west.” “Perhaps so,” said a listener, one day; “but what a pity it is that the finger of Providence had not been thrust through the Hoosac Mountain!”