Evaluating a Young Travel Writer Here is a young English travel writer describing a train trip from Boston to Lowell in the year 1842:

A great many newspapers are pulled out, and a few of them are read. Everybody talks to you, or to anybody else who hits his fancy. If you are an Englishman, he expects that that railroad is pretty much like an English railroad. If you say "No," he says "Yes?" (interrogatively), and asks in what respect they differ.

You enumerate the heads of difference, one by one, and he says "Yes?" (still interrogatively) to each. Then he guesses you don't travel faster in England; and on your replying that you do, says "Yes?" again (still interrogatively), and, it is quite evident, doesn't believe it.

After a long pause he remarks, partly to you and party to the knob of his stick, that "Yankees are reckoned to be considerable of of a go-ahead people too," upon which you say "Yes," and then he says "Yes" again (affirmatively this time); and upon your looking out of the window, tells you that behind that hill, and some three miles from the next station, there is a clever town in a smart lo-ca-tion, where he expects you have con-cluded to stop.

Your answer in the negative naturally leads to more questions in reference to your intended route (always pronounced rout); and wherever you are going, you invariably learn that you can't get there without immense difficulty and danger, and that all the great sights are somewhere else.


A promising young travel writer, think you? He is a bit wordy. I think he shows promise, though. The guy's name is Charles Dickens.  ¶ 8:40 PM