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.
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