"IN KIND."
Country Editor's Wife. "Oh, John dear! Somebody's sent us such a Splendid Salmon!"
Editor (after a moment's thought). "Ah, yes—I know—and cheap too! On'y half a column!"
FIFTY YEARS OF RAILWAY PROGRESS—FIFTY YEARS HENCE.
A large and attentive audience assembled yesterday evening to hear Mr. Fairweather's discourse on the highly interesting and instructive subject of the progress made in the matter of Railway Travelling in the course of the last fifty years.
The lecturer commenced by reminding his audience that, in the days of their fathers and grandfathers, fifty years ago, towards the close of the Nineteenth Century, the wretched Public had to content themselves with a miserable conveyance called a Pullman Car, that they in those days considered a triumph of elegant and convenient locomotion, because they could get tucked away on a shelf at night as a sort of apology for a bed, and be served with a mutton-chop by day, as a makeshift for lunch, and this they considered wonderful, because they were being dragged over their road at the marvellous, soul-thrilling pace of sixty miles an hour. (Loud laughter.) What would the poor benighted travellers of those days say to their present Grand Circular Express, that ran from London to York in two-and-twenty minutes, and ran up to the most northern point in Scotland, then down the Western Coast to Land's End, and back again to London all along the Channel Shore, doing the entire circuit in four hours and a quarter, and this while you reclined on the rich red velvet cushions of the lofty and sumptuously decorated third-class carriage at a one-and-ninepenny fare? No wonder that people took monthly tickets, and went round, and round, and round the two kingdoms; living, in fact, in the train, and being thus perpetually on the move. Look at the advantages offered by the Company, on their new extra-triple width line. A Brass Band, a Theatrical Company, a Doctor, Dancing-Master, Teacher of Elocution, Solicitor, Dentist, and Police Magistrate, accompanied every train, which was, moreover, provided with Turkish Shower and Swimming Baths, Billiard-rooms, Circulating Library, and offered attractive advantages to families wishing, either at their doctor's orders or for the mere sake of the run on its own account, continual change of air, complete sets of handsomely furnished apartments not fitted up with sleeping shelves—(laughter)—but supplied with regular six foot four-posters, such as would have delighted the eyes of their great grandfathers a hundred years ago. The law, too, recently passed, which consigned a Director to penal servitude, in the event of a train being ten minutes after its time, which had been passed owing to the persistent unpunctuality of the South-Eastern Company, had worked admirably, and to it, no doubt, they owed the present orderly management of all the lines in the three kingdoms. What would be the next development of Railway travelling he could not venture to predict, but he thought that if, in the next fifty years, they made as much progress as they had in the fifty years just expired, he was of opinion, that though the shareholders might possibly receive a smaller dividend even than that they were drawing to-day—(loud laughter)—the Railway, as an institution in the country, could not be regarded but as being in a highly flourishing condition.
A vote of thanks having been passed to the Lecturer for his lively and instructive discourse, which he briefly acknowledged, the proceedings terminated.