The early railway enterprise in America was not regarded by all persons
with feelings of unmixed satisfaction. Thus we read of the railway
journey taken by a gentleman of the old school, whose experience and
sensations—if not very satisfactory to himself—are worth recording:—“July
22, 1835.—This morning at nine o’clock I took passage in a railroad car
(from Boston) for Providence. Five or six other cars were attached to
the locomotive, and uglier boxes I do not wish to travel in. They were
made to stow away some thirty human beings, who sit cheek by jowl as best
they can. Two poor fellows who were not much in the habit of making
their toilet squeezed me into a corner, while the hot sun drew from their
garments a villanous compound of smells made up of salt fish, tar, and
molasses. By and bye, just twelve—only twelve—bouncing factory girls
were introduced, who were going on a party of pleasure to Newport. ‘Make
room for the ladies!’ bawled out the superintendent, ‘Come, gentlemen,
jump up on the top; plenty of room there.’ ‘I’m afraid of the bridge
knocking my brains out,’ said a passenger. Some made one excuse and some
another. For my part, I flatly told him that since I had belonged to the
corps of Silver Greys I had lost my gallantry, and did not intend to
move. The whole twelve were, however, introduced, and soon made
themselves at home, sucking lemons and eating green apples. . . The rich
and the poor, the educated and the ignorant, the polite and the vulgar,
all herd together in this modern improvement of travelling. The
consequence is a complete amalgamation. Master and servant sleep heads
and points on the cabin floor of the steamer, feed at the same table, sit
in each other’s laps, as it were, in the cars; and all this for the sake
of doing very uncomfortably in two days what would be done delightfully
in eight or ten. Shall we be much longer kept by this toilsome fashion
of hurrying, hurrying, from starting (those who can afford it) on a
journey with our own horses, and moving slowly, surely, and profitably
through the country, with the power of enjoying its beauty, and be the
means of creating good inns. Undoubtedly, a line of post-horses and
post-chaises would long ago have been established along our great roads
had not steam monopolized everything. . . . Talk of ladies on board a
steamboat or in a railroad car. There are none! I never feel like a
gentleman there, and I cannot perceive a semblance of gentility in any
one who makes part of the travelling mob. When I see women whom, in
their drawing rooms or elsewhere, I have been accustomed to respect and
treat with every suitable deference—when I see them, I say, elbowing
their way through a crowd of dirty emigrants or lowbred homespun fellows
in petticoats or breeches in our country, in order to reach a table
spread for a hundred or more, I lose sight of their pretensions to
gentility and view them as belonging to the plebeian herd. To restore
herself to her caste, let a lady move in select company at five miles an
hour, and take her meals in comfort at a good inn, where she may dine
decently. . . . After all, the old-fashioned way of five or six miles,
with liberty to dine in a decent inn and be master of one’s movements,
with the delight of seeing the country and getting along rationally, is
the mode to which I cling, and which will be adopted again by the
generations of after times.”
—_Recollections of Samuel Breck_.