The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1879-06-03 00:00:00

Monet Gantt' Expren.

TUESDAY. JUNE IL 1879.-

Where are we to get wholesome air in our railway
trains? The "smoking compartments" continually
increase in number, and what is worse for those who
detest stinks, the warning notice is continually moved,
so that you may get into what seems a non-smoking
place and find it reeks with the stale odour. To make
at still morc difficult, occasionally "Ladies' compait-
ment" is posted on the glass. Now, I confess to
being fond of the company of a fair proportion of the
fairer sex, even if we don't talk • though 'tis said to be
dangerous to travel with too few, reversing the old
proverb—" Two are company, and three are none."
113 y driving him out of the • ladies' compartment,"
and permeating others with the detestable odour of
stale tobacco, (especially vile in the first trains, which
have been shut up all night, ) the railway companles are
making it most disagreeable for the least oftenuve of
their passengers, the non-smoking man.

A broad and would-be convenient footpath is that
on the right hand going to the G. W. station at Dor-
chester; but an envious fence across it forces the
pedestrians into the road. The joke is that you can
walk on the path till 'tis most awkward to turn out,
when you are brought up short and forced to nal: with
carriages, horses, and cows.

Villas are rising up in all directions round Dorches-
ter, and I want to know who is to occupy them with
the prospect of paying 5 to 8 per ccnt, to the owners.
%Ilia% and large houses, mansions and "barrack s"—these
are what the Ibrchester authorities seCIII determined
to have tlo they remember the old prophecy—" The
pour ye have always with you"?

Perhaps they don't mean to have any more workers,
any more tv.r people, but to invite all nossvasux richer
—"Cu= to Dorchester and spend."

Somebody tells me of a scheme to make l/orchester
a pleasure place—watering place it cannot be. Large
public gardens to be laid out in that indefinite neklh.
bourhood "near the top of the town," and the
military and civilians to be all delilhted with a
military band, while they promenade the gardens,
which should be, I suppose, on the slopes looking over
that lovely view to the north. A charming picture—
can its realisation be hurried a little?

Meanwhile there's Mill-street to accommodate the
poor, although broad roods suitable for cottage.building
plots lie in various parts of the suburbs. lithe Dor-
chester Council would relax their "villa' craze, and
allow houses to be built suitable for mechanics, and
each with a little ground in imitation of the Creator's first
gift-of.work to man, they might not be so troubled
with sanitary puzzles. If there is one "building
condition" more than another that ought to be
enforced in the borough of Dorchester, 'tis that no new
house, however small, should be built without its bit
of land, the proportion being about 25 perches for
every occupant.

No fear would there be of Dorchester suburbs
becoming a pauper warren, if an artisan had no
temptation to let lodgings or to go, for pleasant
occupation, away from his own little garden, the Poor
Man's Bank—a bank that never breaks.

Pleasures of imagination are said to be greater than
pleasures of enjoyment. That accounts, puhat s, for
the kind delay of the expected Donor of the new
Dorchester Museum and that of the new Weymouth
Drill hall. Both these gentlemen have had the credit
of their most munificent intentions, and now for the
ready money from them.—M unificcnt would-be Donors,
each of you remember—" While the grass grows"—
you know the rest.

Is it true that an amnesty to some of the prisoners
at Iler Majesty's Prison was to celebrate I ler Majesty's
birthday, instead of the noisy boom from " these vile
guns"? If not, why slid they begin pulling down the
party walls of the new prison on that felicitous day?
But, woe to offenders, let them not think they'll
escape, even during the mild reign of Victoria Felix,
or on her natal slay, for on that very slay they also
began cutting out the foundations of the new Prison,
which will be a splendid building four stories high.
The Government evidently don't expect the Millennium
yet. Nor do I, till we have much more numerous
little houses and big gardens, in proportion fewer big
mansions and big parks, myth more small land-owners
and much fewer 6-me-keepers, much snore upholstery,
drapery, and grocery, and much fewer asylums and
li