STEAM ON COUNTRY ROADS. 237 



obtain sufficient support, as they ran from village to 

 village and market town to market town. At present, 

 those who live in villages are practically denied locomo- 

 tion unless they are well enough off to keep a horse and 

 trap and a man to look after them. A person residing 

 in a village must either remain in the village, or walk, or 

 go by carrier. The carrier stops at every inn, and takes 

 a day to get over ten miles. The exposure in the 

 carrier's cart has been the cause of serious illness to many 

 and many a poor woman obliged to travel by it, and 

 sit in the wind and rain for hours and hours together. 

 Unless they ride in this vehicle, or tramp on foot, the 

 villagers are simply shut off from the world. They have 

 neither omnibus, tramway, nor train. Those who have 

 not lived in a village have no idea of the isolation possi- 

 ble even in this nineteenth century, and with the tele- 

 graph brought to the local post office. The swift mes- 

 sage of the electric wire, and the slow transit of the mate- 

 rial person — the speed of the written thought, and the 

 slowness of the bodily presence — are in strange contrast. 

 When people do not move about freely commerce is 

 practically at a standstill. But if two passenger road 

 trains, travelling at an average speed of not more than 

 eight miles an hour, one going up and the other down, 

 and connecting two or more market towns and lines of 

 railway, passed through the village, how different would 

 be the state of things ! Ease of transit multiplies busi- 

 ness, and, besides passengers, a large amount of light 

 material could thus be conveyed. There would be depots 

 at the central places, but such trains could stop to pick 

 up travellers at any gate, door, or stile. If the route did 

 not go through every hamlet, it would pass near enough 

 to enable persons to walk to it and join the carriages. 

 No one objects to walk one mile if he can afterwards 



