The other day,--whether
indeed a sign of some dawning of doubt and remorse in the public mind, as
to the perfect jubilee of railroad journey, or merely a piece of the common
daily flattery on which the power of the British press first depends, I
cannot judge;--but, for one or other of such motives, I saw lately in some
illustrated paper, a pictorial comparison of old-fashioned and modern
travel, representing, as the type of things passed away, the outside
passengers of the mail shrinking into huddled and silent distress from the
swirl of a winter snowstorm; and for type of the present Elysian
dispensation, the inside of a first-class saloon carriage, with a beautiful
young lady in the last pattern of Parisian travelling dress, conversing,
Daily news in hand, with a young officer--her fortunate vis-a-vis--on the
subject of our military successes in Afghanistan and Zululand.[24]
3. I will not, in presenting--it must not be called the other side, but the
supplementary, and wilfully omitted, facts, of this ideal,--oppose, as I
fairly might, the discomforts of a modern cheap excursion train, to the
chariot-and-four, with outriders and courier, of ancient noblesse. I will
compare only the actual facts, in the former and in latter years, of my own
journey from Paris to Geneva. As matters are now arranged, I find myself,
at half past eight in the evening, waiting in a confused crowd with which I
am presently to contend for a seat, in the dim light and cigar-stench of
the great station of the Lyons line.
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