He Remained With Me Until The Cars
Started, And Told Me That When He Saw Ladies Travelling Alone He Always
Made A Point Of Assisting Them.
I shook hands with him at parting, feeling
real regret at losing so kind and intelligent a companion.
This man was a
working engineer.
Some time afterwards, while travelling for two successive days and nights
in an unsettled district in the west, on the second night, fairly overcome
with fatigue, and unable, from the crowded state of the car, to rest my
feet on the seat in front, I tried unsuccessfully to make a pillow for my
head by rolling up my cloak, which attempts being perceived by a working
mechanic, he accosted me thus: "Stranger, I guess you're almost used up?
Maybe you'd be more comfortable if you could rest your head." Without
further parley he spoke to his companion, a man in a similar grade in
society; they both gave up their seats, and rolled a coat round the arm of
the chair, which formed a very comfortable sofa; and these two men stood
for an hour and a half, to give me the advantage of it, apparently without
any idea that they were performing a deed of kindness. I met continually
with these acts of hearty unostentatious good nature. I mention these in
justice to the lower classes of the United States, whose rugged exteriors
and uncouth vernacular render them peculiarly liable to be misunderstood.
The conductor quite verified the good opinion which I had formed of him.
He turned a chair into a sofa, and lent me a buffalo robe (for, hot though
the day had been, the night was intensely cold), and several times brought
me a cup of tea. We were talking on the peculiarities and amount of the
breakage power on the American lines as compared with ours, and the
interest of the subject made him forget to signal the engine-driver to
stop at a station. The conversation concluded, he looked out of the
window. "Dear me," he said, "we ought to have stopped three miles back;
likely there was no one to get out!"
At midnight I awoke shivering with cold, having taken nothing for twelve
hours; but at two we stopped at something called by courtesy a station,
and the announcement was made, "Cars stop three minutes for refreshments."
I got out; it was pitch dark; but I, with a young lady, followed a lantern
into a frame-shed floored by the bare earth. Visions of Swindon and
Wolverton rose before me, as I saw a long table supported on rude
trestles, bearing several cups of steaming tea, while a dirty boy was
opening and frizzling oysters by a wood fire on the floor. I swallowed a
cup of scalding tea; some oysters were put upon my plate; "Six cents" was
shouted by a nasal voice in my ear, and, while hunting for the required
sum, "All aboard" warned me to be quick; and, jumping into the cars just
as they were in motion, I left my untasted supper on my plate. After "Show
your tickets," frequently accompanied by a shake, had roused me several
times from a sound sleep, we arrived at Rochester, an important town on
the Gennessee Falls, surrounded by extensive clearings, then covered with
hoar frost.
Here we were told to get out, as there were twenty minutes for breakfast.
But whither should we go when we had got out? We were at the junction of
several streets, and five engines, with cars attached, were snorting and
moving about. After we had run the gauntlet of all these, I found men
ringing bells, and negroes rushing about, tumbling over each other,
striking gongs, and all shouting "The cheapest house in all the world -
house for all nations - a splenderiferous breakfast for 20 cents!" and the
like. At length, seeing an unassuming placard, "Hot breakfast, 25 cents,"
I ventured in, but an infusion of mint was served instead of the China
leaf; and I should be afraid to pronounce upon the antecedents of the
steaks. The next place of importance we reached was Buffalo, a large
thriving town on the south shore of Lake Erie. There had been an election
for Congress at some neighbouring place the day before, and my vis-à-
vis, the editor of a Buffalo paper, was arguing vociferously with a man
on my right.
At length he began to talk to me very vivaciously on politics, and
concluded by asking me what I thought of the late elections. Wishing to
put an end to the conversation, which had become tedious, I replied that I
was from England. "English! you surprise me!" he said; "you've not the
English accent at all." "What do you think of our government?" was his
next question. "Considering that you started free, and had to form your
institutions in an enlightened age, that you had the estimable parts of
our constitution to copy from, while its faults were before you to serve
as beacons, I think your constitution ought to be nearer perfection than
it is." "I think our constitution is as near perfection as anything human
can be; we are the most free, enlightened, and progressive people under
the sun," he answered, rather hotly; but in a few minutes resuming the
conversation with his former companion, I overheard him say, "I think I
shall give up politics altogether; I don't believe we have a single
public man who is not corrupt." "A melancholy result of a perfect
constitution, and a humiliating confession for an American," I observed.
The conversations in the cars are well worth a traveller's attention. They
are very frequently on politics, but often one hears stories such as the
world has become familiarised with from the early pages of Barnum's
Autobiography, abounding in racy anecdote, broad humour, and cunning
imposition. At Erie we changed cars, and I saw numerous emigrants sitting
on large blue boxes, looking disconsolately about them; the Irish
physiognomy being the most predominant.
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