ection of the Pacific Railroad. Another proposed, but still
ideal, road completes our connection with the Western Ocean by way of
Stockton, San Jose, and San Francisco.

We do not pretend to assert that the route indicated is in all respects
the most economical and practicable; a good deal more surveying must be
done before that can be said of any entire route, though we think it may
fairly be claimed for our ideal section between St. Louis and Denver. We
have chosen this route because along its course are more completely
represented the natural features to which in any case the Pacific
Railroad must look for all its primary obstacles and part of its
subsequent profits.

To complete the conception as its reality must in time be completed, let
us unite our Trans-Missouri portion with the Atlantic and Great Western
Railway, under the all-inclusive title of the Atlantic and Pacific
Railroad. It will not be very far out of the way to regard thirty-eight
hundred miles as the entire length of the line. On the Atlantic and
Great Western section express-trains will run at a speed of twenty-seven
miles an hour, including stops; but to provide against every detention,
let us slow our through-express to twenty-five miles. At this rate we
shall traverse the continent in six days and eight hours. In other
words, the San-Francisco gentleman who left the Jersey depot by the five
o'clock Atlantic and Pacific express-train on Monday morning may
reasonably expect (allowing for difference of longitude) to be in the
bosom of his family just in time to accompany them to morning service on
the following Sunday.

We will suppose our packing accomplished the day before we set out.
During the evening we send our watches to get the exact Washington time.
The schedule of the entire road is based upon that time; and a thousand
inconveniences, once endured by the traveller between New York and St.
Louis, are thereby avoided. It is not necessary to alter one's watch
with every new conductor. We no longer grow dizzy with a horrible
uncertainty on the subject of what-'s-o'clock,--ignorant whether we are
running on New-York time, Dayton time, Cincinnati time, or St. Louis
time,--whether, indeed, all time be not a pure subjective notion, and
any o'clock at all a mere popular delusion. For the introduction of a
uniform standard we have originally to thank the Atlantic and Great
Western Railway.

In comfort and elegance the second-class cars of the At