me in return a copy of a printed appeal, which he had drawn up to the Queen, offering to forego his hereditary rights—not being an ambitious man—if she would give him the title and estates of the Duchy of Cornwall. I found that my friend claimed his descent direct from William the Conqueror. So I informed him, with a base disregard of truth, that he was the exact image of a portrait of William Rufus, in the possession of a friend of mine. He was pleased to take the remark in good part, and then proceeded to dilate on the pleasure of meeting agreeable companions on the journey. Not long ago, he told me, he had been travelling with a gentleman who was sulky, and would not talk; so he waited till this unhappy man looked out of the window, and then dropped a lighted vesuvian on the cushion. The silent stranger sat down, and, as his majesty remarked with a grim smile, “was not able to sit still during the rest of the journey.” I fancied the story was meant as a lesson, and exerted forthwith what conversational powers I possessed: with what success it is not for me to say. This I know—that the lord of Windsor became confidential and communicative, and told me a variety of stories about his adventures with Santa Anna, the King of Dahomey, the Emperor Napoleon, and other illustrious personages, which, under other circumstances, would have been really amusing for their Munchausen improbability. To the present day, I am uncertain whether my companion was not more knave than fool. The question was one it would have required longer time to decide than I chose to allow. The moment the train stopped—and oh! how long it was!—I jumped out and left the king alone in his glory.
The incident seems humorous enough now, but I know, to me at the time it seemed anything but humorous. My acquaintance, instead of being, at the worst, a harmless and somewhat entertaining lunatic, might have been a ferocious maniac. It is always with an unpleasing recollection of this adventure that I find myself shut up alone with a stranger. A thousand things might happen, besides the extreme case of his happening to lunge at you with a pocket-knife, as the victim of competitive examination did the other day at Bletchley. Supposing, I often think to myself, he or she was to die, how singularly unpleasant my position would be! I have seen a man in an American car going off into one fit after another for an hour together. Fancy what a terrible sixty minutes that would have been if you had happened to be all alone with him. I was once put into a carriage on an English line, together with two drunken sailors returning to Liverpool from a week’s carouse in London. A schoolgirl, returning home for the holidays, was, unfortunately, in the same carriage with us; and for an hour this poor child had to listen perforce to the ribald songs and oaths of the two ruffians, who were just in that stage of abusive drunkenness in which they fluctuated between offensive rudeness and still more offensive familiarity. In a case like this there was absolutely nothing to be done. If it had come to a tussle, it was infinitely more probable that I should have been thrown out of the window, than that I should have succeeded in throwing the sailors out, and therefore all I could do was to keep on good terms with the gallant British tars till we reached the first stopping-place. Now, any inconvenience of this kind would be remedied if our companies would consent to the simple expedient of establishing some means of communication between the passengers and the guards. Mechanically, there is absolutely no difficulty about such an arrangement. In the United States the contrivance employed is of the simplest. A cord runs from car to car, fastened by loops to the roofs. The guard at the end of the train can stop the engine at once by jerking the cord a certain number of times, and the passengers can summon the guard at any moment by pulling it. Of course I shall be told that such a plan may work very well in America, but that it would never do in England. Now, I admit that the conditions of locomotion are somewhat different in the two countries. The guard—or, for that matter, any person—in a Yankee train can walk as easily from one end of the cars to the other as if he was in his own drawing-room. Moreover, as each car contains from twenty to sixty people, according to the fulness of the train, no mischievous or nervous passenger can stop the engine without sufficient cause. If he did so, his fellow-travellers would be there to report him. There is really no reason, however, why, with certain modifications, a similar plan should not be introduced here. If the footboard alongside our carriages were made a little broader, and projected a foot or so beyond the carriage, and if a stout rail were fixed to the side of each compartment, a guard might walk with perfect safety from carriage to carriage, no matter what the speed of the train might be. It is done in Belgium, and might be done equally well in England. I should not propose to give the power of stopping the train to the passengers. A rope running outside the carriages might communicate between the guard and drivers; one running inside between the guard and the passengers. If I am told that the public are so foolish, or so unscrupulous, that people would always be ringing for the conductor, I say that I have heard the same story often with regard to other matters, and have always found it false. As a rule, I believe English people have as much good sense as Frenchmen or Germans or Italians. If it was found in practice that the guard was constantly summoned unnecessarily, a fine might be imposed on any passenger who pulled the rope without reasonable cause; but doubtless such a precaution would not be required. At any rate, nothing can be worse than the present system. It is monstrous that, as has happened before now, a carriage should be on fire without the guard having any power of stopping the train, or that a madman should be stabbing his companions in a carriage without his victims having any means of obtaining aid.
Next to the safety of my person, I value most dearly the safety of my luggage; and on this point my grievances are manifold. I say unhesitatingly, that our luggage arrangements are the very worst in the world. I am not addicted to elaborate contrivances in the way of trunks that hold everything, from a shower-bath to a looking-glass, or of