t such a time,
to thrust dying persons in the last stage of poverty into a
second-class carriage full of ladies and children?"

There's a pretty charity for you! 'A dying man belonging to the
_poorest class_.'--'_Our_ second-class carriage'--here's richness!
as Mr. Squeers observed. Here's sweetness and light! But England
has no monopoly of such manners. There was a poor little Cingalese
girl in the train by which I travelled homeward last February from
Genoa and through the Mont Cenis. And there were also three
Englishmen and a Frenchman--the last apparently (as Browning put it)
a person of importance in his day, for he had a bit of red ribbon in
his buttonhole and a valet at his heels. At one of the small
stations near the tunnel our train halted for several minutes;
and while the little Cingalese leaned out and gazed at the unfamiliar
snows--a pathetic figure, if ever there was one--the three Englishmen
and the Frenchman gathered under the carriage door and stared up at
her just as if she were a show. There was no nonsense about the
performance--no false delicacy: it was good, steady, eye-to-eye
staring. After three minutes of it, the Frenchman asked
deliberately, "Where do you come from?" in a careless, level tone,
which did not even convey that he was interested in knowing.
And because the child didn't understand, the three Englishmen
laughed. Altogether it was an unpleasing but instructive little
episode.

No: nastiness has no particular nationality: and you will find a
great deal of it, of all nationalities, on the frontier between
France and Italy. I do not see that Monte Carlo provides much cause
for indignation, beyond the _tir aux pigeons_, which is quite
abominable. I have timed it for twenty-five minutes, and it averaged
two birds a minute--fifty birds. Of these one escaped, one fluttered
on to the roof of the railway station and died there slowly, under my
eyes. The rest were killed within the enclosure, some by the first
barrel, some by the second, or if they still lingered, were retrieved
and mouthed by a well-trained butcher dog, of no recognisable breed.
Sometimes, after receiving its wound, a bird would walk about for a
second or two, apparently unhurt; then suddenly stagger and topple
over. Sometimes, as the trap opened, a bird would stand dazed.
Then a ball was trundled at it to compel it to rise. Grey breast
feathers strewed the whole inclosure, in places quite thick