THE RAILWAY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 168, 20 July 1867, Page 2

THE RAILWAY.

To TUB El>lTolt OF THB N&LSON EVENING MAIL. Sir —A fellow-citizen of great histrionic powers, whom doubtless many of your readers have had the pleasure of hearing, is most felicitous iv his impersonation of a cabman, a drunken student, and a London magistrate. The student hails a cab and desires to be driven to Paddington; on arriving there he tells cabby to drive on to Bayswater; and from thence is driven to Mileend, the Borough, &c, until cabby, discovering that he is being humbugged, drives to Bow-street and introduce unprofitable passenger to the magistrate. We are very much in the predicament of poor cabby; the various letter-writers on the railway question, and notably F. W. 1., would have us to drive them hither and thither, not having any idea where the end of their jonrney is to be; and if we go ou at this rate we shall find it a very unprofitable amusement,, and moreover this ten-mile pace is becoming \evy monotonous. Tarquin, as we know, purchased the books of a Sibyl, containing the fate of Rome; is Stevenius the only Sibyl? aud if Curtisius will not purchase his sibylline books which appeared in your contemporaries, is there no other Sibyl in Neison ? Has no one else one original idea? After all this maundering, could not some less visionary person drive us straight to London, and write a few practical letters in the papers, telling us what kind of agent to employ or scud home ; what is the usual way of putting these enterprises before the' Stock Exchange or Credit Mobilier; and

what prelimiuary survey is wanted — whether something like the Ordnance Survey of England, which railway engineers have in their hands when they go over the country there, or something less exact and confined to a mile or so on either side of the proposed line? Do let us have no more infinitesimal doses of nothiug diluted into many long letters, but let us have something practical, aud waste no more time. I am, etc., Me Punch, July 18 th, 1867.