TALES OF THE TRAINS
By Charles James Lever
With Illustrations By Phiz.
Boston: Little, Brown, And Company.
1907.
TALES OF THE TRAINS:
BEING SOME CHAPTERS OF RAILROAD ROMANCE
By Tilbury Tramp, Queen’s Messenger.
Bang, bang, bang!Shake, shiver, and throb;The sound of our feet Is the piston’s beat,And the opening valve our sob!
Contents
THE COUPÉ OF THE NORTH MIDLAND |
INTRODUCTION.
Let no enthusiast of the pastoral or romantic school, no fair reader witheyes “deeply, darkly, beautifully blue,” sneer at the title of my paper. Ihave written it after much and mature meditation.
It would be absurd to deny that the great and material changes which ourprogress in civilization and the arts effect, should not impressliterature as well as manners; that the tone of our thoughts, as much asthe temper of our actions, should not sympathize with the giant strides ofinventive genius. We have but to look abroad, and confess the fact. Thefacilities of travel which our day confers, have given a new and adifferent impulse to the human mind; the man is no longer deemed a wonderwho has journeyed some hundred miles from home,—the miracle willsoon be he who has not been everywhere.
To persist, therefore, in dwelling on the same features, the samefortunes, and the same characters of mankind, while all around us isundergoing a great and a formidable revolution, appears to me as insane aneffort as though we should try to preserve our equilibrium during theshock of an earthquake.
The stage lost much of its fascination when, by the diffusion ofliterature, men could read at home what once they were obliged to goabroad to see. Historical novels, in the same way, failed to produce thesame excitement, as the readers became more conversant with the passagesof history which suggested them. The battle-and-murder school, theraw-head-and-bloody-bones literature, pales before the commonest coroner’sinquest in the “Times;” and even Boz can scarce stand competition with thevie intime of a union workhouse. What, then, is to be done? Quæregio terræ remains to be explored? Have we not ransacked every climeand country,—from the Russian to the Red Man, from the domestichabits of Sweden to the wild life of the Prairies? Have we not had kingsand kaisers, popes, cardinals, and ministers, to satiety? The land serviceand the sea service have furnished their quota of scenes; and I am notsure but that the revenue and coast-guard may have been pressed into theservice. Personalities have been a stock in trade to some,