home rather than encounter the fatigues,
risks, and expense of travelling. What are the facts now? Above three
hundred millions of separate journeys are undertaken by rail in the
United Kingdom in one year. Our sportsmen can breakfast in London on
the 11th of August, sup the same night in Scotland, and be out on the
moors on the morning of the 12th. On any afternoon any lady in England
may be charmed with Sir Walter Scott's `Lady of the Lake,' and, if so
minded, she may be a lady on the veritable lake itself before next
evening! Our navvies now travel for next to nothing in luxurious ease
at thirty miles an hour, and our very beggars scorn to walk when they
can travel at one penny a mile. But all this is nothing compared with
our enormous increase of goods traffic throughout the kingdom. I have
not time, nor is this the place, to enlarge on such a subject, but a
pretty good commentary on it exists in the simple fact that on your line
alone, which is not, as you know, the largest of the railways of this
land, the receipts for goods, minerals, and live-stock carried amounted
to 500,000 pounds in the last half-year, as you will see from the
report.

"There is one point to which I would now direct your attention--namely,
the great facilities which we give to residential and season-ticket
holders. I think it a wise and just course to afford the public such
facilities, because it tends to produce a permanent source of traffic by
tempting men, who would otherwise be content to live within walking or
'bus distance of their offices, to go down into the country and build
villas there, and if you extend that sort of arrangement largely, you
cause villages at last to grow into towns, and towns to spread out with
population and with manufactures. I regard our course of action in
regard to season-tickets, therefore, as a sowing of the seed of
permanent and enduring income. The receipts from this source alone, I
am happy to say, amounts to 84,000 pounds."

Captain Lee's spirit had, at the bare mention of season-tickets, gone
careering down the line to Clatterby, in the beautiful suburbs of which
he had the most charming little villa imaginable, but he was abruptly
recalled by a "he-ar, he-ar," from the toady, who was gradually becoming
himself again, and a round of applause from the audience, in which,
having an amiable tendency to follow suit, he joined.

After this the chairman expatiated at some length on the economical