weather; not always a coat, and never a decent one, at his work. He
blows no cheery music out of a brass bugle as he approaches a town,
but pricks the loins of the fiery beast, and makes him scream with a
sound between a human whistle and an alligator's croak. He never
pulls up abreast of the station-house door, in the fashion of the
old coach driver, to show off himself and his leaders, but runs on
several rods ahead of his passengers and spectators, as if to be
clear of them and their comments, good or bad. At the end of the
journey, be it at midnight or day-break, not a man nor a woman he
has driven safely at the rate of forty miles an hour thinks or cares
what becomes of him, or separates him in thought from the great iron
monster he mounts. Not the smock-frocked man, getting out of the
forwardmost Third, with his stick and bundle, thinks of him, or
stops a moment to see him back out and turn into the stable.

With all the practical advantages of this machine propulsion at bird
speed over space, it confounds and swallows up the poetical aspects
and picturesque sceneries that were the charm of old-fashioned
travelling in the country. The most beautiful landscapes rotate
around a locomotive axis confusedly. Green pastures and yellow
wheat fields are in a whirl. Tall and venerable trees get into the
wake of the same motion, and the large, pied cows ruminating in
their shade, seem to lie on the revolving arc of an indefinite
circle. The views dissolve before their best aspect is caught by
the eye. The flowers, like Eastern beauties, can only be seen "half
hidden and half revealed," in the general unsteadiness. As for
bees, you cannot hear or see them at all; and the songs of the
happiest birds are drowned altogether by the clatter of a hundred
wheels on the metal track. If there are any poor, flat, or fen
lands, your way is sure to lie through them. In a picturesque and