THE COUNTRY How TO GET THERE. 79 



carry a month s provision, and carefully avoid stand 

 ing on the platforms or sitting in the front car col 

 lisions, at the moderate speed of this road, rarely af 

 fect the rear cars ; if you are on the line of the Erie, 

 or Morris and Essex, you will have to clamber over 

 Bergen Hill, and take the train after it comes out 

 of the tunnel, provided you desire an approach to 

 safety; and the weight and inconvenience of a life- 

 preserver on a hot summer day even one of the 

 patent portable blow-up-able vests of modern inven 

 tion render steam-boat travel unendurable. In go 

 ing to Flushing you have a double cause for rejoic 

 ing you are first thankful when you are safe off the 

 steam-boat and on board the cars, and, in returning, 

 doubly thankful when you are safe out of the cars 

 and back again on the steam-boat. 



There is an unreasonable prejudice in the public 

 mind against being killed on a railroad. There are 

 many worse deaths : there is hanging, for instance, 

 but that, alas ! is rare, or we should have fewer alder 

 men; there is being broken on the wheel on the 

 French antique model, or sawed asunder after the 

 Chinese fashion; lockjaw is unpleasant, apoplexy un 

 comfortable, and epilepsy repulsive. In fact, death 

 is so disagreeable, and comes in so many ways, that 

 a man hardly knows how to make a judicious choice. 



