By This Excellent Arrangement, In Going A Very Long Journey, In
Which You Are Obliged To Change Cars Several Times,
And cross rivers and
lakes in steamers, you are relieved of all responsibility, and only
require at the end to
Give your checks to the hotel-porter, who regains
your baggage without any trouble on your part.
This plan would be worthily imitated at our termini in England, where I
have frequently seen "unprotected females" in the last stage of frenzy at
being pushed out of the way, while some persons unknown are running off
with their possessions. When you reach a depôt, as there are no railway
porters, numerous men clamour to take your effects to an hotel, but, as
many of these are thieves, it is necessary to be very careful in only
selecting those who have hotel-badges on their hats.
An emigrant-car is attached to each train, but there is only one class:
thus it may happen that you have on one side the President of the Great
Republic, and on the other the gentleman who blacked your shoes in the
morning. The Americans, however, have too much respect for themselves and
their companions to travel except in good clothes, and this mingling of
all ranks is far from being disagreeable, particularly to a stranger like
myself, one of whose objects was to see things in their everyday dress. We
must be well aware that in many parts of England it would be difficult for
a lady to travel unattended in a second-class, impossible in a third-class
carriage; yet I travelled several thousand miles in America, frequently
alone, from the house of one friend to another's, and never met with
anything approaching to incivility; and I have often heard it stated that
a lady, no matter what her youth or attractions might be, could travel
alone through every State in the Union, and never meet with anything but
attention and respect.
I have had considerable experience of the cars, having travelled from the
Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from the Mississippi to the St. Lawrence,
and found the company so agreeable in its way, and the cars themselves so
easy, well ventilated, and comfortable, that, were it not for the
disgusting practice of spitting upon the floors in which the lower classes
of Americans indulge, I should greatly prefer them to our own exclusive
carriages, denominated in the States "'coon sentry-boxes." Well, we are
seated in the cars; a man shouts "Go a-head!" and we are off, the engine
ringing its heavy bell, and thus begin my experiences of American travel.
I found myself in company with eleven gentlemen and a lady from Prince
Edward Island, whom a strange gregarious instinct had thus drawn together.
The engine gave a hollow groan, very unlike our cheerful whistle, and,
soon moving through the town, we reached the open country.
Fair was the country that we passed through in the States of Maine, New
Hampshire, and Massachusetts.
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