t meal hours, with dirty garments and begrimed hands and faces--to see
the grandeur as well as the delicacy of their operations, while thus
labouring amongst din and dust and fire, to provide _you_ with safe and
luxurious locomotion. We cannot indeed, introduce you to the particular
"works" we have described; but if you would see something similar, hie
thee to the works of our great arterial railways,--to those of the
London and North-Western, at Crewe; the Great Western, at Swindon; the
South-eastern, at Ashford; the Great Northern, at Doncaster; the North
British, at Cowlairs; the Caledonian, at Glasgow, or any of the many
others that exist throughout the kingdom, for in each and all you will
see, with more or less modification, exactly the same amazing sights
that were witnessed by worthy Mrs Marrot and her hopeful son Bob, on
that never-to-be-forgotten day, when they visited the pre-eminently
great Clatterby "works" of the Grand National Trunk Railway.

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Note. The foregoing description is founded on visits paid to the
locomotive works of the Great Western, at Swindon, and those of the
North British, near Glasgow--to the General Managers and Superintendents
of both which railways we are indebted for much valuable information.--
R.M. Ballantyne.

CHAPTER NINE.

CONCERNING DOMESTIC ECONOMY AND DIFFICULTIES--SURPRISES AND
EXPLANATIONS.

How to "make the two ends meet," is a question that has engaged the
attention and taxed the brains of hundreds and thousands of human beings
from time immemorial, and which will doubtless afford them free scope
for exercise to the end of time.

This condition of things would appear to arise from a misconception on
the part of those who are thus exercised as to the necessities of life.
They seem to imagine, as a rule, that if their income should happen to
be, say three hundred pounds a year, it is absolutely impossible by any
effort of ingenuity for them to live on less than two hundred and
ninety-nine pounds nineteen shillings and eleven-pence three farthing.
They therefore attempt to regulate their expenditure accordingly, and
rather plume themselves than otherwise on the fact that they are firmly
resolved to save and lay bye the farthing. They fail in this attempt as
a matter of course, and hence the difficulty of making the two ends
meet. If these unfortunates had been bred to the profession of
eng