The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-11 00:00:00

AMERICAN TRAVELLING.

(From a Correspondent of the Times.)
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 13.
I left New York for Washington a few days ago. The
thermometer was at 96 deg, in the shade. I chose the even-
ing mail in the vain hope of shunning the killing heat of
the day. From my hotel to the ferry, and from this again
to the Jersey shore, I and my baggage were, of course, at
he mercy of hackney coachmen, carmen, and porters. Like
everything else, extortion is free in America ; it is sullen,
insolent, overbearing besides; it bows to no tariff, stoops to
no fixed charges ; it takes its own time, chooses its own way,
deaf to your remonstrances, unmoved by your hurry ; bully
or blackguard it does not, for it has a quiet consciousness
of its power, and does not condescend to higgle or argue.
It bumps your "plunder.' on the ground, shatters your
trunks wilfully, as if visiting on each luckless box that so-
cial sin that made some men owners, and some others mere
carriers of trunk.
The ticket-seller, the luggage master, all the railway offi-
cials, harbour towards you the same feelings as your cabman
or porter. They all aye you sorely, answer you curtly and
tartly. Nay, before they answer they stare at you leisurely
as if revolving in their mind what right you have to put a
a question, or what business it is of theirs to attend to it.
They have not the sharp, snappish, pedantic, dictatorial
tone of your French Jack-in-office, but neither have they
the rough-and-ready but good humoured obliging English
way of going to work. The fare is not down on your ticket;
you pay as you are bidden ; your luggage is not weighed ;
the charge is made at discretion. It may be all right, no
doubt. I was bidden to pay twice as much lot thy trunks
from 'Washington to Baltimore as I had paid between New
York and Washington—twice as much for the same weight
over hardly one third of the distance. I asked for explaea-
Lion, and was answered by a vacant supercilious look. Very
clearly inside the station the horse has the whip-hand of
his master. Your choice lies between travelling on such
conditions or travelling not at all.
Enter: you have been kept en queue at the ticket-
once; you have been penned up at the waiting-room as in
France, or at Smithfield ; but the bell rings, aed this is the
way to the "cars." The cars, or railway carriages, are
long vans on railway wheele, constructed to carry any
number of passengers from 60 to 100, disposed its seats, two
by two, with a gangway running the whole length between.
These cars are all for one and the same class. Americans
travel on the footing of perfect equality. The crowd was
immense, as it always is at every hour, on every road, by
every conveyance in this marvellously stirring community.
I read in the pages of a recent good-natured English
traveller that "this promiscuous coming together of persons
of every description gave rise to no inconvenience; for the
same thing happened hero as on board the penny boats on
the Thames, where the shabby passengers, altogether en-
titled to equal rights, instiuctively shrink from contract
with the better drensed, and huddle together as if knowing
their places." I did not find my fellow-travellers so
modestly accommodating the other evening, nor have I
since found many instances of this amiable disposition
among these people. There was a rush and a scrambling
and jolting; the cars were taken by storm, the places were
secured, and with stranger " car-tellows " poverty could
scarcely have made me acquainted, It is true some of the
cars were not equally thrown open to the multitude. Before
them stood soldiers, grizzly guardians with muskets, bar-
meg the doors. These were reserved we know not for whom;
perhaps for the miitary. One or two were set apart for
"ladies," for in America the sex is your true aristocracy.
Like the Emperor Nicholas, it confers distinction on those
its countenance shines upon, and so long only as it does so
shine upon. The sex enjoys privileges which it can easily ex-
tend to any man or set of men in its company. It is, however,
a distinction without a difErence, tor the " gents' " car (the
word gentleman is never written at full in these places) the
gents' cars are only open to the world. The "ladies''
cars are accessible to " the world and his wife." A very
fishwomsn is as freely admitted into the privileged corn-
par ment as a duchess ; and she can bring with her a whole
squad of fishmongers, as much entitled to rank among the
"ladies' men" as she among the ladies. Luckily or unluckily
I was owned by no lady, and had to put up with the gents'
limbo. I got in. The whole of Broadway was squeezed in
that close narrow apace. There they all were, the loafer,
the rowdy, the coatless, the hatless, the washed and the
unwashed, the sharp-featured sour-visaged Yankee, the
wild shaggy-headed Irishman, the heavy-lipped beery Ger-
man; all the heads of the people, with the exception of the
negro head, All Broadway is on its navels, incessantly on
its travels. You would say that broadcloth shuns the high-
wily, or that gentili y dr,ps its trappings, and affects the
look, the costume, and the manners of rascality to propi-
tiate it on the highway. Tne air of the place choked me,
the sight siconed me, lam an old stager, be it borne in
mind, broken into all manners of hardships, roughing it
with the hardiest of men. But I draw a line between the
washed and the unwashed when I can ; and I do not con-
ceive why, so long es one class lives apart from another in
houses, so long as Americans shun contact with each other
as they do by pews in churches and boxes in the theatres,
why, I say, they should not allow money equaly to pur-
chase separation in public conveyances, why men of all
ranks should be "made" to "pig together" on omnibuses,
boats, and railways. Talk of the tyranny that chains toge-
ther the patriot and the felon in the gelleye I Why, here
is republican equality dooming the clean to spend a whole
night, or any number of nights, side by side with the tut-
clean in the cars.

I walked up and down the gangway twice and three times,
like a luckless dog fidgeting lound and round for a roper spot
to lay himself down. Alas I no spot was left. I took my seat
near one of the sovereign citizens, edging away from him,
wHiout looking at him. Smoking is not allowed, I believe,
even in the gents' cars, but the Yankee needs no ci,rar to
make a beast of himself with. The quid was in every two
mouths out of three. An incessant fire was kept up iron, the
double row on the right-hand seats to the double row on the
left. The missiles flew out of the narrow open windows, re-
gardless of the wind which flung them back in minute
spray, mixed with the dust of the road and black ashes from
al.;
,cpzine. But why should I dwell on the loathsome
scene ? Tt war pi,adamonium ; and a night spentisnonasne
American car, even if ii`brings a man d,?rn. to a proper
of his own unworthiness as one of the rade; is not ce..tainly
calculated to awaken his kindest sympathies in behalf of
the race itself.
I am an old stager, as I said, and if compelled to travel
five or six nights in succession I can make I.Lays3lf at home
in a carriage seat as in the most Itixurions of beds. I
smothered dawn my indignation, overcame my disgust,
crouched down in my narrow and by no means soft bench,
and soon dozed. Dozing, indeed I Behind me was the door
owninge. every two minutes, fiercely jarring as it opened,
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