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CHAPTEPt VI. 



EAST AND SOUTH-EAST. 



Attentive readers of the works of Charles Dickens 

 will be aware that, when David Copperfield went the 

 second time to visit Mr. Peggotty at Yarmouth, he 

 travelled by the mail, on the night of a storm, which 

 grew worse as he passed through Ipswich, seventy 

 miles from London, at, I assume, twelve minutes past 

 three o'clock in the morning. 



I, too, went down to Ipswich not long afterwards — 

 that is, while the so-called railway mania was still 

 a living force — and had two novel experiences : the 

 vision (as I believed it to be at the time) of an actual 

 ghost, and an introduction to the level, the theodo- 

 lite, and the art of surveying for a railway, which I 

 have not yet forgotten. 



In 18^6 speculation ran high. The spirit of 

 gambling broke out in epidemic form ; enterprises 

 of all kinds were set on foot, but the construction 

 of railways — on paper — chiefly caught the public 

 mind, and turned the public head. 



Everyone with a coat to his back, and some know- 



