“All the world and his wife” are travelling; and a nice day it is to commence a journey. How neat and tasteful those ladies look in their drab travelling dresses; how self-satisfied their cavaliers, freshly shaved and shampooed, in their brown linen over-alls. What apoplectic looking carpet-bags; full of newspapers, and oranges, and bon-bons, and novels, and night-caps! Saratoga, Newport, Niagara, White Hills, Mammoth Cave—of these, the ladies chatter.

Well, here come the cars. Band-boxes, trunks, baskets, and bundles are counted, and checks taken; a grave discussion is solemnly held, as to which side of the cars the sun shines on; seats are chosen with due deliberation, and the locomotive does its own “puffing” to the bystanders, and darts off.

It is noon! How intense the heat; how annoying the dust; how crowded the cars; how incessant the cries of that poor tired baby! The ladies’ bonnets are getting awry, their foreheads flushed, and their smooth tresses unbecomingly frowsed, (see Fern Dictionary.) Now their little chattering tongues have a reprieve, for Slumber has laid her leaden finger on each drooping eyelid: even Alexander Smith’s new poem has slidden from between taper fingers. Dream not lovingly of the author, fair sleeper: poets and butterflies lose their brilliancy when caught.

How intensely ugly men look asleep! doubled up like so many jack-knives—sorry looking “blades”—with their mouths wide open, and their limbs twisted into all sorts of Protean shapes. Stay; there’s one in yonder corner who is an exception. That man knows it is becoming to him to go to sleep. He has laid his head against the window and taken off his hat, that the wind might lift those black curls from his broad white brow;—he knows that his eye-lashes are long and dark, and that his finely chiselled lips need no defect-concealing moustache;—he knows that he can afford to turn towards us his fine profile, with its classical outline;—he knows that his cravat is well tied, and that the hand upon which he supports his cheek is both well-formed and daintily white. Wonder if he knows anything else?

We halt suddenly. “Back! back!” says the conductor. The sleepers start to their feet; the old maid in the corner gives a little hysterical shriek; brakemen, conductor, and engineer jump off, push back their hats, and gaze nervously down the road. “What’s the matter?” echo scores of anxious voices. “What’s the matter?” Oh, nothing; only a mother made childless: only a little form—five minutes ago bounding with happy life—lying a mangled corpse upon the track. The engineer says, with an oath, that “the child was a fool not to get out of the way,” and sends one of the hands back to pick up the dismembered limbs and carry them to its mother, who forbade even the winds of heaven to blow too roughly on her boy; then he gives the “iron horse” a fresh impetus, and we dash on; imagination paints a scene in yonder house which many a frantic parent will recognize; and from which (even in thought) we turn shuddering away—while the weary mother in the corner covers her fretful babe with kisses, and thanks God, through her tears, that her loving arms are still its sheltering fold.