Charles James Lever

“ To the unoccupied observer the scene might have been an amusing one; the little domestic incidents of leave-taking and embracing, the careful looking after luggage and parcels, the watchful anxieties for a lost cloak or a stray carpet-bag, blending with the affectionate farewells of parting, are all curious, while the studious preparation for comfort of the old gentleman in the coupé oddly contrast with similar arrangements on a more limited scale by the poor soldier’s wife in the third-class carriage.
Small as the segment of humanity is, it is a type of the great world to which it belongs. ”

“ Death I knew it must be, and what a death!—to be run down by the train for Prague, or smashed by the advancing one from Olmutz. How near my fate might be, I could not guess. I neither knew how long it was since I entered the tunnel, nor at what hours the other trains started. They might be far distant, or they might be near at hand. Near!—what was space when such terrible power existed?—a league was the work of minutes—at that very moment the furious engine might be rushing on! ”

“ The perpetual bang! bang! of the piston has, in its reiterated stroke, something diabolically terrible. It beats upon the heart with an impression irresistibly solemn! I remember how in my dreams the accessories of the train kept flitting round me, and I thought the measured sounds were the clickings of some infernal clock, which meted out time to legions of devils. I fancied them capering to and fro amid flame and smoke, with shrieks, screams, and wild gestures. My brain grew hot with excitement. I essayed to awake, but the very rocking of the train steeped my faculties in a lethargy. ”

“ The train had now reached its destination, and the old lady got out, amid the maledictions of some, and the stifled laughter of others of the passengers,—for only one or two had shrewdness enough to perceive that she was one of those good credulous souls who implicitly believed all she had narrated, and whose judgment having been shaken by the miraculous power of a railroad which converted the journey of a day into the trip of an hour, could really have swallowed any other amount of the apparently impossible it might be her fortune to meet with. ”

“ Yes, sir, if you prefer to call her the lady; for I shall persist in my previous designation. Oh, Mr. Tramp, that was the great moment of my life. You may have remarked that we pass from era to era of our existence, as though it were from one chamber to another. The gay, the sparkling, and the brilliant succeed to the dark and gloomy apartment, scarce illumined by a ray of hope, and we move on in our life’s journey, with new objects suggesting new actions, and the actions engendering new frames of thought, and we think ourselves wiser as our vicissitudes grow thicker ”

“ I shall not be tedious now, sir. We began ‘the overland,’—the angel travelling as Lady Blanche Yellowley, to avoid any possible inquiry or impertinence from the official people. This was arranged between Virginie and myself, without her knowledge. Then, indeed, began my Arabian nights. Ah, Mr. Tramp, you never can know the happiness enjoyed by him who, travelling for fourteen long hours over the hot sand, and beneath the scorching sun of the desert, comes at last to stretch his wearied limbs upon his carpet at evening, and gazes on celestial beauty as he sips his mocha. ”

“ The criminal in the dock, whose eyes are riveted in a glazy firmness on him who shall speak his doom, drinks in the words ere they are well uttered,—each syllable falls upon his heart as fatal to hope as is the headsman’s axe to life. The accents are not human sounds; it is the trumpet of eternity that fills his ears, and rings within his brain,—the loud blast of the summoning angel calling him to judgment.
“Terrible as the thunder of coming destruction is, there is yet a sense more fearfully appalling in the unbroken silence of the tomb,—the stillness of death without its lethargy! ”

“ How would the great realities of life flash upon the reader’s mind, and how insensibly would he amalgamate fact with fiction! And, lastly, think, reflect, what new catastrophe would open upon an author’s vision; for while, to the gentler novelist, like Mrs. Gore, an eternal separation might ensue from starting with the wrong train, the bloody-minded school would revel in explosions and concussions, rent boilers, insane luggage-trains, flattening the old gentlemen like buffers. ”

“ Wet through with rain, late for a coach, soaked in a damp bed, half starved by a bad dinner, overcharged in an inn, upset on the road, without hope, without an ‘order,’ I had only to fall back upon my talisman, and rarely had to mutter it twice, ere visions of official wealth and power floated before me, and imagination conjured up gorgeous dreams of bliss, bright enough to dispel the darkest gloom of evil fortune ”

“ I fancied a thousand alleviating circumstances in the dreamy lethargy of gradual dissolution. Then came the thought—and how strange that such a thought should obtrude at such a time!—what will be said of me hereafter?—how will the newspapers relate the occurrence? Will they speculate on the agony of my anticipated doom?—will they expatiate on all that I am now actually enduring? What will the passengers in the train say, when the collision shall have taken place? Will there be enough of me left to make investigation easy? ”

“ Well, sir, we were aboard at last, above a hundred of us, standing amid the lumber of our carpet-bags, dressing-cases, and hat-boxes, half blinded by the heavy spray of the condensed steam, and all deafened by the din.
“The world of a great packet-ship, Mr. Tramp, is a very selfish world, and not a bad epitome of its relative on shore. Human weaknesses are so hemmed in by circumstances, the frailties that would have been dissipated in a wider space are so concentrated by compression, that middling people grow bad, and the bad become regular demons. ”

“ I do not mean to say that the ceremony was performed by a bishop, or that a royal duke gave her away; neither can I state that the train of carriages comprised the equipages of the leading nobility. I only vouch for the fact that a little man, with a black eye and a sinister countenance, read a ceremony of his own composing, and made them write their names in a great book, and pay thirty shillings for his services; after which I put a fifty-pound note into Blunden’s hand, saluted the bride, and, wishing them every health and happiness, took my leave. ”

“ THE TUNNEL OF TRÜBAU.
Amblers have not more prejudices and superstitions than railroad travellers. All the preferences for the winning places, the lucky pack, the shuffling cut, &c., have their representatives among the prevailing notions of those who “fly by steam.”
“I always sit with my back to the engine,” cries one.
“I always travel as far from the engine as possible,” exclaims another.
“I never trust myself behind the luggage train,” adds a third. ”

“ The truck on which my carriage was placed had by some accident become detached from the train; and while the other portion of the train proceeded on its way, there was I, alone, deserted, and forgotten, in the dark tunnel of Trübau,—for such I at once guessed must be the dreary vault, unillumined by one ray of light or the glimmering of a single lamp. Convictions, when the work of instinct rather than reflection, have a stunning effect, that seems to arrest all thought, and produce a very stagnation of the faculties. ”

“ Short of royalty, there is no one nowadays may not be met with “on the rail;” and from the Duke to Daniel O’Connell—a pretty long interval—your vis-à-vis may be any illustrious character in politics, literature, or art. I intend, in some of these tales, to make mention of some of the most interesting characters it has been my fortune to encounter; meanwhile let me make a note of the most singular railroad traveller of whom I have ever heard, and to the knowledge of whom I accidentally came when travelling abroad. ”

“ This extraordinary blunder I only discovered when leaving London in the train.
“We were a party of three, sir.” Here he groaned deeply. “Three,—just as it might be this very day. I occupied the place that you did this morning, while opposite to me were a lady and a gentleman. The gentleman was an old round-faced little man, chatty and merry after his fashion. The lady—the lady, sir—if I had never seen her but that day, I should now call her an angel. Yes, Mr. Tramp, I flatter myself that few men understand female beauty better. ”

“ Saxony, rich in picturesque beauty; the valley of the Elbe, in many respects finer than the Rhine itself; the proud summit of the Bastey; the rock-crowned fortress of Koenigstein,—are all succeeded by monotonous tracts of dark forest, or still more dreary plains, disfigured, not enlivened by villages of wretched hovels, poor, I have heard, as the dwellings of the Irish peasant. What a contrast, too! the people, the haggard faces and sallow cheeks of the swarthy Bohemian, with the blue eye and ruddy looks of the Saxon! ”

“ I need not say that she fully understood my motives; she was a Frenchwoman, Mr. Tramp; the Russian loves train oil, the Yankee prefers whittling, but a Frenchwoman, without an intrigue of her own, or some one’s else, on hand, is the most miserable object in existence.
“‘I see where it all will end,’ cried she, as I turned to leave her; ‘I see it already. Before six weeks are over, you will not ask my aid to influence my mistress.’
“‘Do you think so, Virginie?’ said I, grasping at the suggestion. ”

“ I remember once hearing this subject fully discussed in a railroad carriage, where certainly the individuals seemed amateurs in accidents, every man having some story to relate or some adventure to recount, of the grievous dangers of “The Rail.” I could not help questioning to myself the policy of such revelations, so long as we journeyed within the range of similar calamities; but somehow self-tormenting is a very human practice, and we all indulged in it to the utmost. ”

“ Instead of the characters of a story remaining stupidly in one place, the novelist now can conduct his tale to the tune of thirty miles an hour, and start his company in the first class of the Great Western. No difficulty to preserve the unities! Here he journeys with bag and baggage, and can bring twenty or more families along with him, if he like. Not limiting the description of scenery to one place or spot, he whisks his reader through a dozen counties in a chapter, and gives him a bird’s-eye glance of half England as he goes ”

“ Yellowley’s compliments,” said the waiter, as I broke the crust of a veal-pie, and obtained a bird’s-eye view of that delicious interior, where hard eggs and jelly, mushrooms, and kidney, were blended together in a delicious harmony of coloring. “Mr. Yellowley’s compliments, sir, and will take it as a great favor if he might join you at supper.”
“Have not the pleasure of knowing him,” said I, shortly,—“bring me a pint of sherry,—don’t know Mr. Yellowley.” ”

“ Yellowley at this crisis of his tale, “Captain Smithet, of the ‘Hornet,’ says he has the steam up and will start in ten minutes.”
“Bless my heart,” cried I; “this is a hasty summons;” while snatching up my light travelling portmanteau, I threw my cloak over my shoulders at once.
“You ‘ll not go before I conclude my story,” cried Mr. Yellowley, with a voice of indignant displeasure.
“I regret it deeply, sir,” said I, “from my very heart; but I am the bearer of government despatches for Vienna; they are of the greatest consequence,—delay would be a ruinous matter.” ”

“ No, sir!—she was in that factitious trance, that wiliest device of Satan’s own creation, a woman’s sleep,—the thing invented, sir, merely to throw the shadow of dark lashes on a marble cheek, and leave beauty to sink into man’s heart without molestation. Sleep, sir!—the whole mischief the world does in its waking moments is nothing to the doings of such slumber! ”

“ Steam has invented something besides fast travelling; and if it has supplied a new method of getting through the world, it has also suggested about twenty new ways of going out of it. Now, it’s the old story of the down train and the up, both bent on keeping the same line of rails, and courageously resolving to see which is the “better man,” a point which must always remain questionable, as the umpires never survive. ”