August 16, 1888
How many miles of railway in the United States? One hundred and fifty thousand six hundred miles, and about half the mileage of the world.
How many have they cost? Nine billion dollars.
How many people are employed by them? More than 1,000,000.
Who built the first locomotive in the United States? Peter Cooper.
How long does a steel rail last with average wear? About eighteen years.
What is the cost of a palace sleeping car? About $15,000 or $17,000 if “vestibuled”.
What is the cost of a high class eight wheel passenger locomotive? About $8500.
What is the longest American railroad tunnel? Hoosac tunnel, or the Fitchburg Railway (47 miles)
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August 16, 1888
We were driving out one Sunday from Decatur when we came upon a negro with a club in his hand and a freshly killed opossum on his shoulder. We stopped to examine his prize, and the Colonel said:
My friend, do you know it is Sunday?
Sartin, boss.
Are you not a religious man?
Yar’, I’ze jest on my way home from church.
And what sort of religion have you got that permits you to go hunting on Sunday?
Religium! Religium! queried the man as he held the ‘possum with one hand and scratched his head with the other. Does you specks any black man in Alabama is gwine to tie hisself up to any religium that ‘lows a ‘possum to walk right across the road ahead of him an’ git away free! No, sah. A religium which won’t bend a little when a fat ‘possum heads you off couldn’t be ‘stablished round here by all de preachers in de unyvarse!
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July 14, 1888
Bad manners of our young folks of the fair sex
Objectionable ways which lessen the attractiveness of maidenhood- A practice in traveling- Munching candies in public places- an unwise habit
The traveler of years or wisdom accustomed to much exercise of his powers of observation or well acquainted with the world will have noticed that the young women of this period and perhaps of all other periods as well have one or two ways of their own which are more or less to be regretted, and which it would be well for them to look to and correct while they may, since once established with acquiescent usage no habit is easily overthrown.
These ways of our young ladies are ways which take off from the pleasant bloom of their maidenhood, and give them often a coarse grained and vulgar air, which none would regret more than themselves were they but aware of it, for they must know that few things are more unlovely in young girls than those which venture on the bold, the brusque, the assumption of too much savoir-faire or the obtrusion of themselves upon public notice.
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August 9, 1888
A half-witted fellow was traveling by railway for the first time. Having swatted himself, he did not see the use of keeping a bit of cardboard, so he threw his ticket out of the window of the carriage. Consequently at the station where the tickets were looked at he had to pay. At his journey’s end he had to acknowledge that he had been “done.” A few weeks later some men in a railway carriage saw this same an laughing innocently to himself in a corner of the compartment. They inquired the reason of his merriment. He replied by telling then what he had suffered on his first railway journey. “But,” concluded he, triumphantly “I’ve done ‘em this time.”
“Well what have you done?” asked his companions.
“Why,” replied he, “I’ve taken a return ticket and I ain’t a going back again.”
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August 8, 1888
A tall, fine looking woman, dressed in the latest fashion, entered an uptown drug store the other evening, and, approaching the counter, leaned wearily against it. The clerk, who was waiting on another customer, reached to a shelf, and taking down a little box shook three pills into a bit of paper. He passed them to the fashionable lady and gave her a glass of mineral water. After putting the pills in her mouth the lady drank the water and with a sigh of relief hurried from the shop. Not a word passed between either customer or clerk, and no money was paid for the pills.
“Well, that beats me,” exclaimed a visitor.
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August 8, 1888
Traveling is one of the severest tests of good breeding; and whoever leaves home to go to the seaside or the mountains, does well to bear this fact in mind. At the places of summer resort, too, people are more in danger of making disadvantageous or even objectionable, acquaintanceships than they are at their own homes, from the very fact that here all the world appears on a more familiar footing; and as every person is a stranger to every other, people of doubtful character or reputation in their native places, often succeed in passing themselves off for what they are not, in the crowd of a watering place.
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