levard looking like that, sir?" said
Josephine.

"A gentleman in a cap! They'll take you for a bricklayer--indeed they
will, sir," said Charles; "or rather for a milkman, with his tin can.
I can't stand that: I will carry it rather myself, though I feel my
rheumatics on these damp pavements."

"Monsieur Paul must take a cab--at least to the barrier: it will not
be pleasant to make a scandal in the street."

"Who will tend Monsieur Paul these two days, now?" This was uttered
with manly grief by Charles.

"And whoever will cook for him along the road?" It was Josephine who
asked the question with a heavy sigh.

To make an end of this charming scene of Old Virginia faithfulness,
I put my best leg out and departed with gymnastic sprightliness. An
instant after I turned my head.

Charles and Josephine were fixed on the doorstep, following me with
their regards, and I believed I saw a tear in the left eye of each.
What fidelity! I smiled in a sort of indulgent and baronial manner,
but I felt touched by their sensibility.

Come on! It is but a twenty-four hours' separation.

Go forth, then, as I remember saying long ago, without fear and with a
manly heart, to meet the dim and shadowy Future.

EDWARD STRAHAN.

* * * * *

FROM PHILADELPHIA TO BALTIMORE.

In 1832 a few adventurous men obtained a charter for a railroad from
Baltimore to Port Deposit: other charters were granted by Delaware
and Pennsylvania in succeeding years, and at last in 1838 all were
consolidated as the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad
Company, and became a through all-rail line, interrupted only by
the Susquehanna and some minor water-courses, under one management,
beginning at Philadelphia and ending at Baltimore. But the country was
too young and weak to make this a strong road, either in capital
or business. It struggled along with a heavy debt, poor road-bed,
imperfect rail (in some parts the old strap rail), few locomotives and
cars, and inconvenient depots, making but little progress up to
1851, when Mr. Samuel M. Felton was brought from Boston to assume the
presidency.

Seeing the actual and future importance of the line, some Eastern men
bought up the stock, put in the necessary money and encouraged Mr.
Felton to begin an entire revolution in the road. The road-bed was
perfected and widened for a double track, new depots erected in
Baltimore and Philadelphia, new rails laid, new branche