AMERICAN TRAVELLING.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 37, 1 February 1864, Page 7

AMERICAN TRAVELLING.

(Prom a Correspondent of the Times.) I left New York for "Washington a few days ago. The therm ometer was at 96deg. in the shade. I chose the evening mail in the ■ vain hope of , shunning the killing heat of the day. Erom my hotel to the ferry, and from this again to the Jersey shore, I and my baggage were, of course, at the 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 j 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 social sin that made some men owners, and some others mere carriers, of trunks. The ticket-seller, the luggagemaster, all the railway officials, harbour towards you the same feelings as your cabmen or porter. They all eye 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 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 for my 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 explanation, 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-office ; you have been penned up at the waiting-room as in Erance, or at Smithfield ; but the bell rings, and this is the way to the "cars." The cars, or railway carriages, are long vans on railway wheels constructed to carry any number of ! passengers from sixty to one hundred, disposed in seats, two by two, with a gangway running the whole length between. These cars are all for one and the same olass. Americans travel pn the footing of perfect equality. 3?he oyoird was immense, as it always is at every houv, on every road, by every conveyance, in this marvellously stirqring community. I read in the pages of a recent good-natured English traveller that "this promiscuous coming of persons of every description, gave rise to no inconvenience : for the same thing happened here as on board $be penny boats on the Thames, where f;he phabby passengers, .although entitled to equal rights, instinctively shrink from contact with the hetterdressed, 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, sphere was a rush and a scrambling and jo]sngj £he ears were taken by storm, J |;he places ~?*eve sgcuyed., $Q<l with ganger " car-jfejlpj^ " "poverty could scarcely haye 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, barring- the doors. These were reserved we know not for whom; perhaps for the military. 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 ifc pan easily extend to any man or. set of men J£ its company. It is, -jttp^revei'j $' "di^tif+ptifln : $ a differ-: eice/for the "gents' "'cars (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 fishwornan is as freely admitted into the privileged compartment as a duchess, and she can bring Witll her » WllOle SCpacl offishmongers, em mudh entitled to ra.nk among the \\ Jadies" men as she among the ladies. Ljjcjqly (jr unluckily I was 'owned' by n# lady, and had to put' up with' the gents' limbo. "T* got in. , ' The whole of Broadway was squeezed in that close nfjrrpjv japp^Or They were all there, ffiebafe^, &c ppwdy, tjhe cpatjes.s, #ie fiii^ess, the washed and tfye unwashed, the sharp-featur.ed s ( qur vigaged Yankee, £he wild shgggy-liea.aed trishmip, the heavy-lipped beery jGrerman; 'all the heads of the people, witn the exception #f the negro head. All Broadway is on its travels, incessantly on its travels. You would say that broadcloth shuns th£ highway, or that gentility drops \\k ffiWW* ?# ftffepfes the }6pK the edstume, ma the rikoners of. rascality ;tb propitiate it on the liighW. The 'air of the' place choked me, the 'sight sickened ' me. I am an old Stager, l»e it borne in mind, broken hifp ajl manners of hardships, rough•mg it w^h £ji# harftyesj; o f men fJujb I? draWa* lme between the washe*] ffi the unwashed wHen J can* and &o npt cpnjceive yghj, sp long as one class lives apart from another ii so long as Americans shun oon.

tact -with each other, as they do bypews in churches and boxes in .the theatres— why, I say, they should not allow money equally to purchase separation iii public conveyances — why men of all ranks should be" made " to " pig together " on omnibuses, boats, and railways. Talk of the tyranny that chains together the patriot and the felon in the galleys! Why, here- is republican equality, dooming, the clean to scend a whole night, or any number of nights, side by side with the unclean in the cars. I walked up and down the gangway twice or three times, like a luckless dog fidgeting round and round for a proper spot to lay himself down. Alas! no choice was left. I took my seat near one of the sovereign citizens_ edging away from him, without looking at him. Smoking is not allowed, I believe, even in the gents' cars, but the Yankee needs no cigar- to make a beast of himself with. The quid was in every two mouths out of three. An incessant fire was kept up from the double row on the right-hand seats' to the double row on the left. The missiles flew out of the narrow open windows regardless of the wind which flung them back in minute spray, mixed with the dust of the road and the black ashes from the engine. But why should I dwell on the loathsome scene ? It was Pandemonium ; and a night spent in an American car, even if it brings a man down to a proper •sense of his own unworthiness as one of the race, is certainly not 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 myself at home in a carriage seat as in the most luxurious of beds. I smothered down my indignation, overcame my disgust, crouched down in my narrow and by no means soft bench, and soon dozed. Dozing, indeed ! Behind me was the door opening every two minutes, fiercely jarring as it opened, cruelly banging as it closed. The gangway was a thoroughfare for vendors of orange pop, eatables and drinkables, books, Yankee notions. The voice was not sufficient to solicit custom ; the basket was thrust in } r our ribs for your patronage. The hawkers of New Yo*rk papers bawled the titles of -their ware in our ears till midnight. Presently came the turn for the Philadelphia, then for the Baltimore early press. The evening trash was followed by the morning rubbish, with first, second, and third editions, and the " sensation " headings dinned at full length into our ears. Anon there was the sharp twanging voice of the Yankee guard squalling for tickets. He came past like a turnkey making the round of his gaol birds. He dug his sharp-nailed thumb between the shoulders and breast of the unlucky sleepers. He spoke to us, handled us, as no [London policeman would deal Avith a thief. Eight and ten times at least in the night was that odious call for tickets renewed. The necessities of the service may, for aught I know, render the nuisance unavoidable ; but nothing will convince me that the surly official dog does not take a wanton pleasure in aggravating the hardness of his functions ; that he does not wish to impress you with the fact that all men are equal before him, and that till he sees your ticket he has a right to look upon you as a swindler, and the right to treat you as such both before and after seeing the ticket. Mauled, pounded, with all my poor blood boiling with the sense of long endured indignities, I at last reached Washington, wljere, as a matter- . of course, 1 had tp go through the ordeal of porters, carmen, and hackney-coach-men, and to bear the vacant, insolent stare of the office-keeper, and the laziness and untidiness of the waiters at the hotel. I have smce been moving aboiit, without ceasing, by day no less than by night, by steamboats no less than by railways. I found nowhere a change for the better. Eveiywhere the same crowds and mobs, the same filth, the same utter disregard for other people's comfort, the same reckless irresponsible extortion, the same cool, quiet insolence, the want of all order, punctuality, civility. I spoke t{V weli-fcQ-do. Americans, who agreed wit]} me that travelling in their country exposes them to all the harsh unmannerly treatment I complained of; who confirmed my opinion that matters on th?ct score have become infinitely worse than they used to be in my old experience of Yankeeland a qi*arter of a century since, when they were in. all conscience already as l>acL as they qughj; tq ho. Isy fyionds shrug their ' shoulders,"' and thinks the evil admits ' of no' cure. Secession you may have in America, and martial law, and the suspension of tlie habeas corpus; but democracy must needs hold its tyrannical sway on the high road ; and a division of" railway carriages Into, 'clashes., a separation o,r j^rst an"4 second cabin passengers in' steamboats, are no more to be thought of than the removal of the nasty quid from -j;he jaws qf an independent citizen, or the abolition of the privilege every man has of turning the carpet even of a lady's drawingroom into a pig-sty. How, should, then, a poor wight travel in this country ? The answor pf mj estimable friends is. simply "donfc*' a^a. they illustrate precept- by practice by limiting their excursions in the Stfatesto jb'urneys of dire necessity, and hastening to Europe whenever they can afford leisure and money for genial locomotion. Travelling in America is like politics— T a dirty wpijk, frpm which shrink, feaying'it'-tcj thqse who h&v'e np better way tq get on in the wp#d., and; VbQ WfW hQW tQ - twa it to the beat apcpimt, .