through a deep cutting or tunnel, or over a bridge with water below,
coming in occasionally as a sort of symphony to the main air?

Have you never noticed this?

No? Bless me, what a _very_ unimaginative person you are! I have,
frequently; and yet, I do not think I am any brighter than the ordinary
run of people.

Drawn some odd thousands of miles by the iron horse, as it has been my
fortune to be during different periods of my life, I have seldom failed
to associate his progress thus with those lesser Melpomenean nymphs, who
may be selected to watch over the destinies of the steam god and fill up
their leisure hours by "riding on a rail," in the favourite fashion of
the South Carolinian darkeys.

Of course the carriage wheels do not perpetually sing the same song:--
that would be monotonous.

They know better than that, I can assure you. Sometimes they rattle out
the maddest of mad waltzes--such as that which the imprudent German
young lady, living near the Harz Mountains, found herself dancing one
day against her will, when she had given expression to the very improper
statement, that, she would "take the devil for a partner," if he only
would put in an appearance at the gay and festive scene at which she was
then present. Sometimes, again, they will evolve, note by note, the
dreariest air that the composer of the Dead March in _Saul_ could have
devised; or, croon you out a soothing lullaby, should you feel sleepy,
to which the charming melody of "The Cradle Song" would bear no
comparison. In fact, the nymphs know their work well; and so alter
their strains as to suit every mood and humour of the variously-tempered
travellers that listen to their musical cadences.

As I proceeded now on my way to Southampton, where I was to take the
ocean steamer for my passage to America, the railway nymphs were busy
with their harmonies.

Not sad or dispiriting by any means, but briskly enlivening was their
lay.

They seemed to me to sing--

"You're off on your travels! Off on your travels,
To fame and fortune in another land!
To wait and work, Frank! Wait and work, Frank!
Ere you gain your own Min's hand!"

And, perhaps, it was from the recollection of Monsieur Parole
d'Honneur's kindness, and from my having been in company with him that
winter in Paris, where I had heard that opera of Offenbach's for the
first time, but the tune of the carriage wheels was strangely like the
"Pars pour Crete" chorus in