80 COACHING. 



back at night, while the follower of old Isaac 

 Walton may kill his trout in some of the Berk- 

 shire or Hampshire streams and enjoy the pleasure 

 of his (the fish's) company at a seven o'clock 

 dinner in London. 



Of course, occasionally there are discomforts 

 connected with the rail, for on a fine Summer's 

 day it is far more agreeable to view the country 

 from a travelling chariot, britchka, or stage- 

 coach, than to be shot forth like an arrow from 

 a crossbow, at an awful rate, amidst a hissing, 

 whizzing, ear-piercing, shrill, sharp noise, some- 

 thing between a catcall in the gallery of some 

 transpontine theatre on Boxing Night and the 

 war-whoop of the Ojibbeway Indians after a 

 scalping-party in North America. Then the 

 odour ! Instead of the scent of the brier, the 

 balmy bean-field, the cottage-side honeysuckle, 

 the jessamine, you have an essence of villan- 

 ous compounds — sulphur, rank oil, and 

 soot. 



Again, the railway traveller occasionally finds 

 his luggage missing; sometimes it is lost; our 

 only wonder is that the above does not happen 

 more frequently when we find the platform filled 

 with loungers of all classes. Whether there are 

 more fatal accidents by rail (in proportion to the 



