A FRIEND of ours, sojourning during the past summer in one of the far-off “shore-towns” of Massachusett’s Bay, was not a little amused one day at the querulous complainings of “one” of the “oldest inhabitants” against railroads; his experience in which consisted in having seen the end of one laid out, and at length the cars running upon it. Taking out his old pipe, on a pleasant summer afternoon, and looking off upon the ocean, and the ships far off and out at sea with the sun upon their sails, he said: “I don’t think much o’ railroads: they aint no kind o’ justice into ’em. NeÖw what kind o’ justice is it, when railroads takes one man’s upland and carts it over in wheel-barrers onto another man’s ma’sh? What kind o’ ’commodation be they? You can’t go when you want to go; you got to go when the bell rings, or the noisy whistle blows. I tell yeÖw it’s payin’ tew much for the whistle. Ef you live a leetle ways off the dee-pot, you got to pay to git to the railroad; and ef you want to go any wheres else ’cept just to the eend on it, you got to pay to go a’ter you git there. What kind o’ ’commodation is that? Goin’ round the country tew, murderin’ folks, runnin’ over cattle, sheep, and hogs, and settin’ fire to bridges, and every now and then burnin’ up the woods. Mrs. Robbins, down to Cod-p’int, says—and she ought to know, for she’s a pious woman, and belongs to the lower church—she says to me, no longer ago than day-’fore yesterday, that she’d be cuss’d if she didn’t know that they sometimes run over critters a-purpose. They did a likely shoat o’ her’n, and never paid for’t, ’cause they was a ‘corporation,’ they said. What kind o’ ’commodation is that? Besides, now I’ve lived here, clus to the dee-pot, ever sence the road started to run, and seen ’em go out and come in; but I never could see that they went so d—d fast, nuther!”