THE COUNTRY, AND HOW TO GET THERE.
A very large portion of every man’s life is expended in transporting
himself from one place to another, and there are several modes of doing
it. The most disagreeable and disgusting is to crowd into a city
railroad car, and the next is to ride in an omnibus; the dyspeptic rich
use carriages, the healthy poor do not; you can go on horseback if you
know how to stay there and your horse is agreeable; in cold weather
skating is rapid, in warm weather steam-boats carry you luxuriantly;
and, if time is an object, and life is none, you trust yourself to the
locomotive. To reach Flushing, you must use both steam-boat and
railroad.
“There is one thing,” said Weeville, in the commencement of our
enterprise, with his usual enthusiastic manner, “that you will
appreciate--the access to Flushing is most convenient; there are twelve
trains each way daily, and they run with perfect regularity. No
railroad in the country is so well managed as ours, and no trip could be
pleasanter. You have a half hour on the ferry-boat, and almost twenty
minutes in the cars, just a delightful variety and absolute safety. Why,
they have never killed a passenger since the track was laid.”
This was certainly satisfactory information, and I had to regret that
the necessity of repairing this admirable road compelled its intelligent
and exemplary managers to reduce the number of trains considerably the
very day I commenced building. But it was certainly time the repairs
were made, as a train had just broken through a bridge, and commenced
the customary business of killing passengers; and the entire pile-work,
which constitutes one half the track, was discovered to be utterly
rotted out. I was not sorry the repairs were commenced, although I was
sadly inconvenienced, as the speed and regularity had apparently both
decayed with the woodwork.
Compared with other places, the superior accessibility of Flushing was
apparent. The delay would be temporary, and for good purpose; whereas,
if you wish to live on the North River, it is an even chance that you
are dumped into the water every day or two; if you travel by the Long
Island road, you must carry a month’s provision, and carefully avoid
standing on the platforms or sitting in the front car--collisions, at
the moderate speed of this road, rarely affect the rear cars; if you are
on the line of the Erie, or Morris and Essex, you will have to clamber
over Bergen Hill, and take the train after it comes out of the tunnel,
provided you desire an approach to safety; and the weight and
inconvenience of a life-preserver on a hot summer day--even one of the
patent portable blow-up-able vests of modern invention--render
steam-boat travel unendurable. In going to Flushing you have a double
cause for rejoicing--you are first thankful when you are safe off the
steam-boat and on board the cars, and, in returning, doubly thankful
when you are safe out of the cars and back again on the steam-boat.
There is an unreasonable prejudice in the public mind against being
killed on a railroad. There are many worse deaths: there is hanging, for
instance, but that, alas! is rare, or we should have fewer aldermen;
there is being broken on the wheel on the French antique model, or sawed
asunder after the Chinese fashion; lockjaw is unpleasant, apoplexy
uncomfortable, and epilepsy repulsive. In fact, death is so
disagreeable, and comes in so many ways, that a man hardly knows how to
make a judicious choice. Therefore I always sit on the end seat,
provided the ladies, as is their artless habit, bless their souls! have
each occupied a bench to herself, and have thus taken up all the room,
for I would as lief any time face death as a strange woman with a
hoop-skirt. Besides, by so doing I have a monopoly of this bench myself,
and, if I am to be killed, have it done out of hand and without
prolonged inconvenience.
The Flushing cars were crowded, which proves what a thriving place it
was, for the gentlemanly directors would certainly never willingly
inconvenience or unnecessarily crowd their passengers; and the dépôt is
not skillfully constructed. Alongside the platform was the track of the
Long Island road, beyond it a narrow strip of two or three boards, and
then the Flushing track. As the Long Island train was always in, or
coming in, or going out when the Flushing train was about to start, much
practice, nerve, and courage were required to reach it safely. The other
train had either to be stormed or avoided; passengers had to dribble in
a long line between the tracks, or climb over the platform of the Long
Island cars; and, since no one insulted them by gratuitous advice, they
not unfrequently took the wrong train.
As nerve, courage, and presence of mind are valuable qualities, and
rarely cultivated among ladies, Hunter’s Point dépôt was equal to a
public school, and deserved the commendation of the public. No man or
woman who has safely traveled by this road for a year need dread “the
battle or the breeze.” Any one who can stand on a platform not more than
two feet wide, and, unmoved, let one train whiz past in one direction
and another whiz past in the contrary, without allowing dress or person
to be caught or struck, deserves a diploma for self-command. Of course,
a few “go under” in learning how, but the mass of the traveling public
is vastly improved by the experience.
The completion of the repairs of the road was not followed by an
immediate return to traditional punctuality. I remember reaching
Hunter’s Point one evening by the Twenty-third Street ferry “just in
time to be too late;” the train did not wait for the boat, which was
delayed because the pilot had a curious incapacity for steering into the
dock, and usually ran against all the pile-work of the neighborhood. The
train went out of the dépôt as I came into it. There was only an hour to
wait, however, and a person should never be without that amount of
patience; so I sat down on the platform, dangling my feet over the edge,
as was the universal custom, and commenced to endure an hour’s
unnecessary existence. It is queer how we hate life when it is forced
upon us, and how we love it when there is danger of its being taken away
from us. There sat half a dozen men who would have given from five to
fifty dollars each to have had sixty minutes less of life, whereas the
wretch on the scaffold would give five thousand for sixty minutes more.
The hour went by, then another, and another, each bringing accessions to
the crowd of anxious, hungry, unhappy waiting men and women that clung
round the dépôt like drones round a hive, and giving me plenty of time
to work out the foregoing speculations. Night came upon us. The only
official--the ticket-man--shut up his office and went home, probably to
a loving wife and family; the brakeman put out all but one light; five
o’clock had resolved itself into ten. Conveyances of all kinds, from a
carriage down to a swill-cart, were in demand to carry passengers to
Flushing; fares by these novel and somewhat dilatory vehicles ranged
from one dollar to five. Men became disgusted, women exhausted, and
children irrepressible; but still no train. When I left in despair, at
about midnight, the men had fallen asleep on the benches, while women
were frantically demanding where there was a respectable hotel.
Next day it appeared that the train had run off the track. On this road
the engine had, in those early days of its unperfected existence, the
habit of running with one end foremost while going, and with the other
end foremost when returning; so that, as it unfortunately is not
provided with a cow-catcher at both extremities, it occasionally met
with difficulties. On this particular occasion, during the return trip,
a stupid ox had planted himself in the way, entirely forgetting that the
cow-catcher was not there for him, and absolutely succeeded in
discommoding and annoying at least five hundred people, besides killing
himself--a piece of stupidity on his part only worthy of an ox.
The trains had become very variable; during the first week of my
residence in Flushing, out of the six trips four were failures, and in
the first month I had completed the round of experiences. The boat had
missed the train, and the train had missed the boat; the boat had blown
or burnt up--I never knew which--and the train had gone off the track.
Several men who were not experienced in dodging had been killed; fuel
had given out, and water dried up; engines had grown wheezy, and bridges
become rickety; the pilot had run down the dock entirely, and the engine
reduced its speed to six miles an hour. Once the train started before
the time, but the outsiders became so enraged that no train ever
afterward started on time; in fact, every conceivable mode of evading
punctuality had been tested, but I was happy, at the conclusion, to be
able to repeat the immortal words, “I still live.”
Philosophy is a great resource under such circumstances, and, after all,
there is often as much gained as lost by a want of punctuality. Many a
comfortable nap and undisturbed perusal of the daily papers--two
pleasures for which the ordinary day rarely furnishes
opportunities--have I had by the aid of the Flushing Railroad. Some
persons grumbled, and abused the officials, and uttered bad language,
but it did no good. The employés soon became used to the disappointment,
why should not the passengers? On one occasion, when the locomotive had
been wheezing along at a snail’s pace, stopping frequently to rest and
take breath, I became alarmed, and asked a brakeman what was the matter
with the engine. This was temerity on my part, for railroad men do not
approve of familiarity from passengers, and I dreaded the result as he
gazed calmly at me; but suddenly a smile broke over his countenance, and
he answered laconically, “Played out.”
The conductor was another sort of man; when an unhappy passenger, who
had not borne his trials well, and during the summer had uttered
numerous complaints, was finding fault toward the close of the season
with some omission or commission, the conductor, whose patience had been
entirely exhausted, turned upon him with,
“You have been casting slurs on our railroad all summer; now what do you
know about it?”
“Why, I have been spending the season at Flushing, and have been
traveling on it.”
“Then let me tell you, it is as well managed as other railroads, and if
you don’t like it you need not ride on it. I don’t want any passengers
who are not satisfied.”
This was putting things on their true basis; some silly people think it
a swindle when certain times are advertised but not kept, when boats are
taken off without notice, connections are not made, and the time of
passengers is wasted; but they seem to forget that they need not go by
rail. If they do not wish to ride, they can always walk; the choice is
open to them, and Flushing is only six miles off.
NOTE.--Since the foregoing was written all this has been changed.
The railroad has been put in charge of a newspaper editor. It now
has the finest cars, the best conductors, and makes the most
regular time of any road in the United States. My lots are not all
sold yet.