It Is Well That A Man Should Always Have All For Which
He Is Willing To Pay.
If he desires and obtains more than is good
for him, the punishment, and thus also the preventive, will come
from other sources.
It will be said that the American cars are good enough for all
purposes. The seats are not very hard, and the room for sitting is
sufficient. Nevertheless I deny that they are good enough for all
purposes. They are very long, and to enter them and find a place
often requires a struggle and almost a fight. There is rarely any
person to tell a stranger which car he should enter. One never
meets an uncivil or unruly man, but the women of the lower ranks
are not courteous. American ladies love to lie at ease in their
carriages, as thoroughly as do our women in Hyde Park; and to those
who are used to such luxury, traveling by railroad in their own
country must be grievous. I would not wish to be thought a
Sybarite myself, or to be held as complaining because I have been
compelled to give up my seat to women with babies and bandboxes who
have accepted the courtesy with very scanty grace. I have borne
worse things than these, and have roughed it much in my days, from
want of means and other reasons. Nor am I yet so old but what I
can rough it still. Nevertheless I like to see things as well done
as is practicable, and railway traveling in the States is not well
done. I feel bound to say as much as this, and now I have said it,
once for all.
Few cities, or localities for cities, have fairer natural
advantages than Portland and I am bound to say that the people of
Portland have done much in turning them to account. This town is
not the capital of the State in a political point of view.
Augusta, which is farther to the north, on the Kennebec River, is
the seat of the State government for Maine. It is very generally
the case that the States do not hold their legislatures and carry
on their government at their chief towns. Augusta and not Portland
is the capital of Maine. Of the State of New York, Albany is the
capital, and not the city which bears the State's name. And of
Pennsylvania, Harrisburg and not Philadelphia is the capital. I
think the idea has been that old-fashioned notions were bad in that
they were old fashioned; and that a new people, bound by no
prejudices, might certainly make improvement by choosing for
themselves new ways. If so, the American politicians have not been
the first in the world who have thought that any change must be a
change for the better. The assigned reason is the centrical
position of the selected political capitals; but I have generally
found the real commercial capital to be easier of access than the
smaller town in which the two legislative houses are obliged to
collect themselves.
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