The Pullman car has fortunately come to make railway travelling in
America endurable. Apart from other considerations, the inevitable stove
is better managed. You are thoroughly warmed,---occasionally, it is
true, parboiled. But there is at least freedom from the sulphurous
atmosphere which pervades the ordinary car, with its two infernal
machines, one at either end. In addition, the Pullman cars have more
luxurious fittings, and are hung on smoother springs. It is at night
their value becomes higher, and travellers are inclined to lie awake and
wonder how their fathers and elder brothers managed to travel in the
pre-Pullman era.

Life is too short to limit travel on this continent to the daytime.
Travelling eight hours a day by rail, which we in England think a pretty
good allowance, it would take just five days to go from Montreal to
Halifax. Thanks to the Pullman car and its adequate sleeping
accommodation, a business man may leave Montreal at ten o'clock at
night, say on Monday, and be in Halifax in time to transact business
shortly after noon on Wednesday. Thus he loses only a day, for he must
sleep somewhere, and he might find many a worse bed than is made up for
him on a Pullman. The arrangements for ventilation leave nothing to be
desired save a little less apprehension on the part of Canadians of the
supposed malign influence of fresh air. If you can get the ventilators
kept open you may sleep with impunity. But, as far as a desire for
preserving the goodwill of my immediate neighbours controls me, I would,
being in Canada, as soon pick a pocket as open a window. One night,
before the beds were made up I secretly approached the coloured
gentleman in charge of the carriage and heavily bribed him to open the
ventilators. This he faithfully did, as I saw, but when I awoke this
morning, half stifled in the heavy atmosphere, I found every ventilator
closed.

After leaving Quebec, and for a far-reaching run, the railway skirts the
river St. Lawrence, of which we get glimpses near and far as we pass.
The time is not far distant when this mighty river will be frozen to the
distance of fully a mile out, and men may skate where Atlantic steamers
sail. At present the river is free, but the frost comes like a thief in
the night, and the wary shipmasters have already gone into winter
quarters. The railway people are also preparing for the too familiar
terrors of the Canadian winter. As we steamed out of Quebec we saw the