able liars; all their conceptions will be
exaggerated by their magnificent notions of distance. 'Only a hundred
miles off! Tut, nonsense, I'll step across, madam, and bring your fan!'
'Pray, sir, will you dine with me to-day at my little box at Alleghany?'
'Why, indeed, I don't know. I shall be in town until twelve. Well, I
shall be there; but you must let me off in time for the theatre.' And
then, sir, there will be barrels of pork, and cargoes of flour, and
chaldrons of coals, and even lead and whiskey, and such-like sober things
that have always been used to sober travelling, whisking away like a set
of sky-rockets. It will upset all the gravity of the nation. If two
gentlemen have an affair of honour, they have only to steal off to the
Rocky Mountains, and there no jurisdiction can touch them. And then,
sir, think of flying for debt! A set of bailiffs, mounted on
bomb-shells, would not overtake an absconded debtor, only give him a fair
start. Upon the whole, sir, it is a pestilential, topsy-turvy,
harum-scarum whirligig. Give me the old, solemn, straightforward,
regular Dutch canal--three miles an hour for expresses, and two for
ordinary journeys, with a yoke of oxen for a heavy load! I go for beasts
of burthen: it is more primitive and scriptural, and suits a moral and
religious people better. None of your hop-skip-and-jump whimsies for
me."

--_Sharpe's London Journal_.

AN UNPLEASANT TRIAL TRIP.

Mr. O. F. Adams remarks:--"A famous trial trip with a new locomotive
engine was that made on the 9th of August, 1831, on the new line from
Albany to Schenectady over the Mohawk Valley road. The train was made up
of a locomotive, the _De Witt Clinton_, its tender, and five or six
passenger coaches--which were, indeed, nothing but the bodies of stage
coaches placed upon trucks. The first two of these coaches were set
aside for distinguished visitors; the others were surmounted with seats
of plank to accommodate as many as possible of the great throng of
persons who were anxious to participate in the trip. Inside and out the
coaches were crowded; every seat was full. What followed the starting of
the train has thus been described by one who took part in the affair:--

"'The trucks were coupled together with chains or chain-links, leaving
from two to three feet slack, and when the locomotive started it took up
the slack by jerks, with sufficient force