little time ago were put forth to advocate the sale of some works of high
moral excellence should now be exerted to push a vigorous circulation of
the "Last Sensation," "The Dime Illustrated," "New York under Gas
light," "The Bandits of the Rocky Mountains," and other similar
productions. These pernicious periodicals having been shown around, the
train-boy evidently becomes convinced that mental culture requires from
him no further effort; he relinquishes that portion of his labour and
devotes all his energies to the sale of the bodily nourishment,
consisting of oranges and peaches, according to season, of a very sickly
and uninviting description; these he follows with sugar in various
preparations of stickiness, supplementing the whole with pea-nuts and
crackers. In the end he becomes without any doubt a terrible nuisance;
one conceives a mortal hatred for this precocious pedlar who with his
vile compounds is ever bent upon forcing you to purchase his wares. He
gets, he will tell you, a percentage on his sales of ten cents in the
dollar; if you are going a long journey, he will calculate to sell you a
dollar's worth of his stock. You are therefore worth to him ten cents.
Now you cannot do better in his first round of high moral literature than
present him at once with this ten cents, stipulating that on no account
is he to invite your attention, press you to buy, or offer you any candy,
condiment, or book during the remainder of the journey. If you do this
you will get out of the train-boy at a reasonable rate.

Going to sleep as the train works its way slowly up the grades which lead
to the higher level of the State of Iowa from the waters of Mississippi
one sinks into a state of dim consciousness of all that is going on in
the long carriage. The whistle of the locomotive--which, by the way, is
very much more melodious than the one in use in England, being softer,
deeper, and reaching to a greater distance-the roll of the train into
stations, the stop and the start, all become, as it were, blended into