T US SUCH A
SPLENDID SALMON!"

_Editor_ (_after a moment's thought_). "AH, YES--I KNOW--AND CHEAP
TOO! ON'Y HALF A COLUMN!"

* * * * *

FIFTY YEARS OF RAILWAY PROGRESS--FIFTY YEARS HENCE.

A large and attentive audience assembled yesterday evening to hear Mr.
FAIRWEATHER'S discourse on the highly interesting and instructive
subject of the progress made in the matter of Railway Travelling in
the course of the last fifty years.

The lecturer commenced by reminding his audience that, in the days of
their fathers and grandfathers, fifty years ago, towards the close of
the Nineteenth Century, the wretched Public had to content themselves
with a miserable conveyance called a Pullman Car, that they in those
days considered a triumph of elegant and convenient locomotion,
because they could get tucked away on a shelf at night as a sort of
apology for a bed, and be served with a mutton-chop by day, as a
makeshift for lunch, and this they considered wonderful, because they
were being dragged over their road at the marvellous, soul-thrilling
pace of sixty miles an hour. (_Loud laughter._) What would the poor
benighted travellers of those days say to their present Grand Circular
Express, that ran from London to York in two-and-twenty minutes, and
ran up to the most northern point in Scotland, then down the Western
Coast to Land's End, and back again to London all along the Channel
Shore, doing the entire circuit in four hours and a quarter, and this
while you reclined on the rich red velvet cushions of the lofty and
sumptuously decorated third-class carriage at a one-and-ninepenny
fare? No wonder that people took monthly tickets, and went round, and
round, and round the two kingdoms; living, in fact, in the train, and
being thus perpetually on the move. Look at the advantages offered by
the Company, on their new extra-triple width line. A Brass Band, a
Theatrical Company, a Doctor, Dancing-Master, Teacher of Elocution,
Solicitor, Dentist, and Police Magistrate, accompanied every train,
which was, moreover, provided with Turkish Shower and Swimming Baths,
Billiard-rooms, Circulating Library, and offered attractive advantages
to families wishing, either at their doctor's orders or for the mere
sake of the run on its own account, continual change of air, complete
sets of handsomely furnished apartments not fitted up with sleeping
shelves--(_laughter_)--but supplied with regular six foot
four-poster