been county-family English and he had been for generations
in their service. He did not deprecate the capers of the car, but only
casually owned that, when it happened to be the last in the train, it
did pitch about a bit, sir.

No, England is the only country where you can get the whole worth of
your money in railroad travel, and the well-to-do sinner can enjoy the
comfort which must be his advance recompense in this world for the
happiness he cannot warrantably count upon in the next. That steamer
train of Pullmans in Germany will never contest the palm with the
English corridor train; nor will our palatial, porterless depots vie
with the simplest of these English wayside stations, where the soft
endearments of the railway servants penetrate to the very interior of
the arriving stranger's compartment and relieve him of all anxiety for
his hand-baggage. Then the cloak-room, that refuge of temporary sojourn,
where his baggage remains in the porter's charge till it is put back
into the train, who will contend that our parcels' windows, with their
high counters fencing the depositor from the grim youths standing like
receiving and paying tellers within, compare with the English
cloak-room? Its very name descends from the balls and assemblies of the
past, and graces the public enjoyment of its convenience with something
of the courtesy and dignity of the exclusive pleasures of the upper
classes; it brings to one sense a vision of white shoulders bent over
trim maids slippering slim feet, and to another the faint, proud odors
of flowers that withered a hundred years ago.

But what vain concession is this to the outworn ideals of a state and a
condition justly superseded! How far we have got from that gentle pair
with whom we began peering into the parlor-car in Portland, Maine! To
such as they it will matter little whether Pullman cars are or are not
put on that steamer train in North Germany. A great danger is that the
vast horde of Americans who travel will forget the immeasurable majority
who remain at home, and will lose in their sophistication the
heaven-glimpsing American point of view. It is very precious, that point
of view, and the foreigner who wins it is a happier man than the native
who purse-proudly puts it away. When we part with the daily habit of
trolleys and begin to think in cabs and taxicabs; when we pass the line
of honest day coaches and buy a seat in the parlor-car; when we turn
from pie, or baked bea