Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1881 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

.140 Oj'dcred South.
fly or the splash of a leaping fish would be
enough to overthrow the dainty equilibrium, and
yet all these hundreds of tons of coal and wood
and iron have been precipitated roaring past her
very ear, and there is not a start, not a tremor,
not a turn of the averted head, to indicate that
she has been even conscious of its passage.
Herein, I think, lies the chief attraction of
railway travel. The speed is so easy, and the
train disturbs so little the scenes through which
it takes us, that our heart becomes full of the
placidity and stillness of the country ; and while
the body is borne forward in the flying chain of
carriages, the thoughts alight, as the humour
moves them, at unfrequented stations ; they
make haste up the poplar alley that leads
toward the town ; they are left behind with the
signalman as, shading his eyes with his hand, he
watches the long train sweep away into the
golden distance.
Moreover, there is still before the invalid the