A VICTIM TO SCIENCE. On the very first morning, this autumn, that I essayed to leave Sandstone for London at 8.50, I missed the train by exactly two minutes and a half. It was more than a mile from my new residence to the station (without adding in the 'miss,' which is said to be as good as a mile'), so I did not think it worth while to retrace my steps, but determined to remain where I was for the 10.5 express. No railway waiting-room with which I am acquainted is a pleasant spot for the passing of spare time; but the apartment devoted to that purpose at Sandstone is peculiarly cheerless. One of its windows looks out on a blank wall about a foot distant from it, and the other on the straight, white, treeless road that leads to the town. The walls are decorated with the usual advertisements: that enormous Bed, with Sent Free by Post printed under it, with which the public is so terribly familiar; Mr Bass's inverted pyramid; and the sixteen-shilling Sydenham trousers. There is a missionary-box on the mantel-piece, with a half-penny in it; but that dropped out at the slit so easily, that it did not afford me the least satisfaction in attempting to get at it. There is also a time-table in a neat black frame.

I felt as though I had entered one of those hairdressing establishments kept by a female, where the proprietress inveigles you into that awful back-room of hers, with the remark, that the young man will be with you in a minute,' which you both know will be half an hour at least. The book-stall was closed, and the man who kept it had fled away immediately after the train had gone. The clerk had shut himself into his mysterious den, and nothing but fire would induce him to open the same again for fifty minutes, I knew. The two porters were playing some game, with which I was totally unacquainted, with a luggage-truck and a turn-table. There were no less than seven severe, uncompromising chairs in the apartment, but I was ignorant both of Low and Lofty Tumbling, and could make nothing of them.

My wife had been urging me to make haste all the time I was at breakfast, for fear I should miss the train. I now regretted that I had hurried myself. My memory hovered sorrowfully over the marmalade, with which I had not concluded my repast, as usual; my regretful fancy fluttered muffinward. I drew my cigar-case from my pocket, and was about to strike a

VOL XIX.

PRICE 1d.

light, when my eye lit upon a dreadful writing on the wall, which I had not before observed: Caution.Before a full bench of magistrates at Sandstone, on July 9th, Thomas Jones was fined L.2 and costs for smoking in a railway-carriage. No smoking is permitted either in the carriages, or in any part of the company's stations.' This was a sad blow, indeed, for it was drizzling enough to make the going out of doors unpleasant. I sat down and stared at the sixteen-shilling trousers until I felt all legs. Then I stared out of the window that looked towards the town. Upon the horizon appeared a black speck, which, after a great length of time, developed itself into a man with an umbrella. He moved with all the slowness and deliberation of a geometrical body; the motion of the point produced the line, the motion of the line produced the plane, the motion of the plane produced a very solid old gentleman carrying a carpet-bag.

I was not displeased to find that there was another victim to unpunctuality as well as myself; but being a person of conciliatory disposition, I observed: 'I am afraid, sir, that you have arrived a little late for the train.'

The stout passenger's pale face became florid for an instant, and his eye dilated with terror; but immediately afterwards he replied, with deliberate calmness: You are mistaken, sir; I go by the 10.5. There are still five-and-forty minutes to spare, which is sufficient time, though by no means too much. You should be careful, however, in making such alarming observations: you might cause angina pectoris.' 'I was afraid, sir, that you had missed the 8.50,' replied I; 'I failed to catch that train myself by but a minute or two.'

'Are you, then, one of those imprudent persons who endeavour to catch the train?' observed the stranger with unaffected pity. Permit me to present you with a little work, the perusal of which may tend to prolong a life which you are doing your best to shorten.' He selected a small yellow pamphlet from about a dozen others which he carried in a capacious inside-pocket, and placed it in my hand; its title was, The Influence of Railway Travelling on Health.* I give you that,' pursued he, upon condition that you do not read it in the railway-carriage. "Under the most favourable circumstances," says Mr White

6

* Reprinted from the Lancet.

Cooper, "there is on railways a vibration requiring incessant efforts on the part of the muscles and adjusting apparatus of the eyes to follow the shaking words, and in proportion as the carriages are ill-hung or the line rough, are these efforts great. There can be no doubt that the practice is fraught with danger." You will discover in that volume to what conclusion the most eminent men of science have come upon the subject of catching_the_train. "I have, like many others," observes Dr Forbes Winslow, "removed my family during the summer season to a watering-place some fifty miles from London, and travelled to and fro night and morning by express train. I have been convinced that the advantage of sleeping by the sea-side, and of an occasional day of rest there, was fully counterbalanced by the fatigue and wear and tear of mind and body incidental to daily journeys over this considerable distance. I went to bed at night conscious that I must rise at a given and somewhat early hour, or miss my train. I am sure that this does not render sleep more sound and refreshing; and every one sleeps best on the Saturday night, when this disturbing element does not exist since the next is the day of rest. In the same way, breakfast is eaten with this necessity of being in time still on one's mind. Then, like every one else, I had to get the cab or carriage, and go down to the station; to scramble for the morning paper, and get a seat."

It is impossible to render in words the gravity and earnestness with which the stout gentleman delivered this quotation. When he had concluded it, I was about to reply, but he held up a plump finger, to entreat my silence, got his breath again, after a short struggle, and continued his discourse.

"Some of the worst cases of dyspepsia I meet with," writes a gentleman, with large opportunities of observation, “are amongst persons who habitually hurry over their breakfasts to catch the train, and who have to work their very hardest in the day, that they may be at the station in time to get down to a late heavy dinner in the evening. Such people are dissatisfied because the change into the country does not set them up, forgetting that even the healthiest person could not long bear the lives of regularly renewed excitement they lead-their meals, railway journeys, and their business all being done under a condition of excitement and a sense of racing against time.""

I have never suffered any of these things myself,' said I, and I have travelled much.'

'That is because you are fat,' returned the stout gentleman calmly. You will probably die of apoplexy, without any previous warning whatsoever. Dilatation and fatty degeneration of the heart are probably already going on within you.'

Really, sir,' said I, 'these observations are most offensive; and permit me to add, that if I am inclined to be stout, you are corpulent to rather an extraordinary degree.'

of air in a full railway-carriage, capable of decomposing the permanganate solution'

"The ticket-office is open, my dear sir,' interrupted I-a remark which had the desired effect of immediately diverting the stout gentleman from his atmospheric statistics.

'You go first-class,' said he, of course. A good deal of the impurity of the air is retained by the woollen coverings, and is not given off, but oxidised in its place. In the second and third classes, also, there are often only boards to sit upon, and the vibrations are communicated directly to the system. An eminent chemist once counted no less than ninety thousand vertical movements in a railway-carriage between Manchester and London. The tendency of each of these movements is to produce more or less motion in the twenty-four pieces of which the human spine is made up. Subject to concussions due to vertical movement and lateral oscillation, communicated through the trunk, and actually transmitted by the bony walls of the head, when it rests against the back of the carriage, the brain is indeed apt to suffer. Epilepsy ensues; or Now, there's a man I wouldn't travel with, on any account,' said the stout gentleman, interrupting himself hastily, and dragging me after him into the carriage. Look at his wild eye! He has evidently a predisposition to cerebral disease. It is ten to one that he will go mad some day, and very likely destroy some of his fellow-travellers. He is mad already, to be buying one of those cheap papers, the print of which is always dim and imperfect. That tall shambling-looking person, on the other hand, will probably have paralysis; and even that would be disagreeable to a lady, or a passenger of weak nerves.' 'You draw a very frightful picture, sir,' said I, 'of the dangers of Railway Travelling.'

'I do not, however, overdraw them,' returned my companion. You will find them all, and more, in that little book. But observe for yourself the people on that platform. Do you not see how gray and worn they are. They are habitual travellers, and the habit has aged them, as you see.'

'I have only just taken my house at Sandstone,' said I, and therefore I have never seen any of them before. They seem, however, to be for the most part elderly people.'

"They seem so, sir, but in reality they are nothing of the kind. Travelling a few years since very frequently on the Brighton line," observes one of the leading physicians of the metropolis, "I became familiar with the faces of a number of the regular passengers on that line. Recently, I had again occasion to travel several times on the same line. I have had a large experience in the changes which the ordinary course of time makes on men busy in the world, and I know well how to allow for their gradual deterioration by age and care; but I have never seen any set of men so rapidly aged as these seem to me to have been in the course of those few years."

'I am myself a pretty constant traveller,' replied I, and you really alarm me. I feel getting old while you speak.'

6