age of Pullman cars, and mail steamers that are in reality floating palaces? Yet somehow I sometimes find myself sighing for a little less luxury and speed, and for more of the picturesqueness and good-*fellowship engendered by the conditions of old-time travel, that stands out in such sharp antithesis to the ugliness and unmannerly taciturnity that has come with the railway; the ugliness is universal, but the taciturnity, for some cause I cannot fathom, is confined mostly to England.
Said a prominent citizen of Chicago to me one day, upon his arrival at St. Pancras Station, where I went to meet him as my visitor, in response to my greetings: "Well, sir, as you kindly ask me, I guess I had a mighty pleasant voyage in the steamer, and found your countrymen aboard most agreeable and entertaining; but when I got on the cars at Liverpool with four other Britishers, we had a regular Quakers' meeting-time all the way to London, and when I chanced to make a remark they really appeared utterly astonished that a stranger should venture to address them. Now that just strikes me as peculiar, and if that's your land-travelling manners I guess I don't much admire them; surely there's no sin in one stranger politely speaking to another; indeed, it seems sort of rude to me to get into a car and never as much as utter 'Good morning,' or 'I beg your pardon,' as you pass a party by to take your seat. Perhaps you can tell me just how it is that your countrymen are so stand-offish on the cars?" But we could not answer the question satisfactorily to the querist or to ourselves.
