regard
him as a part of the beast. No one speaks to him, or thinks of him
on the journey. He may pull up at fifty stations, and not a soul
among the Firsts, Seconds, or even Thirds, will offer him a glass of
beer, or pipe-full of tobacco, or give him a sixpence at the end of
the ride for extra speed or care. His face is grimy, and greasy,
and black. All his motions are ambiguous and awkward to the casual
observer. He has none of the sedate and conscious dignity of his
predecessor on the old stage-coach box. He handles no whip, like
him, with easy grace. Indeed, in putting up his great beast to its
best speed, he "hides his whip in the manger," according to a
proverb older than steam power. He wears no gloves in the coldest
weather; not always a coat, and never a decent one, at his work. He
blows no cheery music out of a brass bugle as he approaches a town,
but pricks the loins of the fiery beast, and makes him scream with a
sound between a human whistle and an alligator's croak. He never
pulls up abreast of the station-house door, in the fashion of the
old coach driver, to show off himself and his leaders, but runs on
several rods ahead of his passengers and spectators, as if to be
clear of them and their comments, good or bad. At the end of the
journey, be it at midnight or day-break, not a man nor a woman he
has driven safely at the rate of forty miles an hour thinks or cares
what becomes of him, or separates him in thought from the great iron
monster he mounts. Not the smock-frocked man, getting out of the
forwardmost Third, with his stick and bundle, thinks of him, or
stops a moment to see him back out and turn into the stable.

With all the practical advantages of this machine propulsion at bird
speed over space, it confounds and swallows up the poetical aspects
and picturesque sceneries that were the charm of old-fashioned
travelling in the country. The most beautiful landscapes rotate
around a locomotive axis confusedly. Green pastures and yellow
wheat fields are in a whirl. Tall and venerable trees get into the
wake of the same motion, and the large, pied cows ruminating in
their shade, seem to lie on the revolving arc of an indefinite
circle. The views dissolve before their best aspect is caught by
the eye. The flowers, like Eastern beauties, can only be seen "half
hidden and half revealed," in the general unsteadiness. As for
bees, you cannot hear or see them at all; and the songs of the
ha