uble
tracks, through a remarkably level country, everything put out of its
way, and no more stops than its own necessities of wood and water
require. We should easily beat this in America with anything like equal
facilities, and without charging the British price--L4 7s. (or over $21)
for a distance not equal to the length of the Erie Railroad, almost
wholly through a populous and busy region, where Coal is most abundant
and very cheap.

Our train (the Mail) started from London at 10 1/2 A. M. and should have
been here at 11 P. M. or in a little less than 25 miles per hour. But
the running throughout the country is now bewitched with Excursion
Trains and throngs of passengers flocking on low-priced Excursion return
tickets to see the Great Exhibition, which is quite as it should be, but
the consequent delay and derangement of the regular trains is as it
should _not_ be. The Companies have no moral right to fish up a quantity
of irregular and temporary business to the violation of their promises
and the serious disappointment of their regular customers. As things are
managed, we left London with a train of twenty-five cars, half of them
filled with Excursion passengers for whom a separate engine should have
been, but was not, provided; so that we were behind time from the first
and arrived here at 1 this morning instead of 11 last night.

The spirit of accommodation is not strikingly evinced on British
Railroads. The train halts at a place to which you are a stranger, and
you perhaps hear its name called out for the benefit of the passengers
who are to stop there; but whether the halt is to last half a minute,
five minutes, or ten, you must find out as you can. The French Railroads
are better in this respect, and the American cannot be worse, though the
fault is not unknown there. A penny programme for each train, to be sold
at the chief stations on each important route, stating not merely at
what place but exactly how long each halt of that particular train would
be made, is one of the yet unsatisfied wants of Railroad travelers. Our
"Path-finders" and "Railway Guides" undertake to tell so much that plain
people are confused and often misled by them, and are unable to pick out
the little information they actually need from the wilderness of figures
and facts set before them. Let us have Guides so simple that no guide is
needed to explain them.

There is much sameness in English rural scenery. I have now traveled
near