unnecessarily, merely because it is the custom so to do.  In crossing the Atlantic, for example, a man of means will submit to be shut up in a close cupboard for ten days with an utter stranger, though by paying double fare he can get a cabin to himself.  This arises from no desire for economy, but simply because he does not think for himself; other travellers do the like, and he follows their example.  Yet what money could recompense him for occupying for the same time on land a double-bedded room—­not to say a mere china closet—­with a man of whom he knows nothing except that he is subject to chronic sickness?  A pleasant sort of travelling companion indeed, yet, strange to say, the commonest of all.  Where there is a slender purse this terrible state of things (supposing travel under such circumstances to be compatible with pleasure at all, which, for my part, I cannot imagine) is not a matter of choice; but where it can be avoided why is it undergone?

There is nothing that convinces me of the folly of mankind so much as those advertisements we see in the summer months with respect to travelling companions, from volunteers of both sexes:  ’Wanted, a travelling companion for a few months on the Continent, etc.  The highest references will be required.’  The idea of going with a stranger upon a tour of pleasure must surely originate in Hanwell, and the adventurer may think himself fortunate if it does not end in Broadmoor.  References, indeed!  Who can answer for a fellow-creature’s temper, patience, unselfishness, during such an ordeal as a protracted tour?  No one who has not travelled with him already; and one may be tolerably certain his certificate does not come from that quarter.  It is true some people are married to strangers by advertisement; but their companionship, as I am given to understand, does not generally last for months, or anything like it.

Imagine two people, as utterly unknown to one another, except by letter (and ’references’), as the x and y of an equation, meeting for the first time at the railway-station!  With what tremors must each regard the other!  What a relief it must be to X. to find that Y. is at least a white man; on the other hand, it must rather dash his hopes, if they are set on pedestrianism, to find that his compagnon de voyage has a wooden leg.  Yet what are his mere colour and limbs compared with his temperament and disposition?  If one did not know the frightful risks one’s fellow-creatures incur every day for little pleasure and less profit, one would certainly say these people must be mad.