ad lay for a considerable length
of time through flat, low meadows that skirt the Delaware, which at this
season of the year, covered with snow and bare of vegetation, presented
a most dreary aspect. We passed through Wilmington (Delaware), and
crossed a small stream called the Brandywine, the scenery along the
banks of which is very beautiful. For its historical associations I
refer you to the life of Washington. I cannot say that the aspect of the
town of Wilmington, as viewed from the railroad cars, presented any very
exquisite points of beauty; I shall therefore indulge in a few
observations upon these same railroad cars just here.

And first, I cannot but think that it would be infinitely more consonant
with comfort, convenience, and common sense, if persons obliged to
travel during the intense cold of an American winter (in the Northern
States), were to clothe themselves according to the exigency of the
weather, and so do away with the present deleterious custom of warming
close and crowded carriages with sheet-iron stoves, heated with
anthracite coal. No words can describe the foulness of the atmosphere,
thus robbed of all vitality by the vicious properties of that dreadful
combustible, and tainted besides with the poison emitted at every
respiration from so many pairs of human lungs. These are facts which the
merest tyro in physiological science knows, and the utter disregard of
which on the part of the Americans renders them the amazement of every
traveler from countries where the preservation of health is considered
worth the care of a rational creature. I once traveled to Harrisburg in
a railroad car, fitted up to carry sixty-four persons, in the midst of
which glowed a large stove. The trip was certainly a delectable one. Nor
is there any remedy for this: an attempt to open a window is met by a
universal scowl and shudder; and indeed it is but incurring the risk of
one's death of cold, instead of one's death of heat. The windows, in
fact, form the walls on each side of the carriage, which looks like a
long green-house upon wheels; the seats, which each contain two persons
(a pretty tight fit too), are placed down the whole length of the
vehicle, one behind the other, leaving a species of aisle in the middle
for the uneasy (a large portion of the traveling community here) to
fidget up and down, for the tobacco-chewers to spit in, and for a whole
tribe of little itinerant fruit and cake-sellers to rush through,