to him a sort of
answer, inasmuch as it silenced the contending parties, that he had been
the victim of an impetus. True; still his present position involved a
certain outlay of money simply, not at all his bondage to the instrument
it had procured for him, and that was true; nevertheless, to buy a
ticket to shy it away is an incident so uncommon, that if we can but
pause to dwell on the singularity of the act, we are unlikely to abjure
our fellowship with them who would not be guilty of it; and therefore,
by the aid of his reflections and a remainder of the impetus, Mr.
Patrick O'Donnell stepped into a carriage of the train like any
ordinary English traveller, between whom and his destination there is an
agreement to meet if they can.

It is an experience of hesitating minds, be they Saxon or others, that
when we have submitted our persons to the charge of public companies,
immediately, as if the renouncing of our independence into their
hands had given us a taste of a will of our own, we are eager for the
performance of their contract to do what we are only half inclined to;
the train cannot go fast enough to please us, though we could excuse
it for breaking down; stoppages at stations are impertinences, and the
delivery of us at last on the platform is an astonishment, for it is not
we who have done it--we have not even desired it. To be imperfectly in
accord with the velocity precipitating us upon a certain point, is to
be going without our heads, which have so much the habit of supposing
it must be whither we intend, when we go in a determined manner, that
a doubt of it distracts the understanding--decapitates us; suddenly
to alight, moreover, and find ourselves dropped at the heels of flying
Time, like an unconsidered bundle, is anything but a reconstruction of
the edifice. The natural revelry of the blood in speed suffers a violent
shock, not to speak of our notion of being left behind, quite isolated
and unsound. Or, if you insist, the condition shall be said to belong
exclusively to Celtic nature, seeing that it had been drawn directly
from a scion of one of those tribes.

Young Patrick jumped from the train as headless as good St. Denis. He
was a juvenile thinker, and to discover himself here, where he both
wished and wished not to be, now deeming the negative sternly in the
ascendant, flicked his imagination with awe of the influence of the
railway service upon the destinies of man. Settling a mental debate