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.
Cora.
A flower of the pale, sad South:
Yet pale nor sad is she;
For she blooms on a wonderful tree