[Illustration]

“Will you dare to go along the Boulevard looking like that, sir?” said Josephine.

“A gentleman in a cap!  They’ll take you for a bricklayer—­indeed they will, sir,” said Charles; “or rather for a milkman, with his tin can.  I can’t stand that:  I will carry it rather myself, though I feel my rheumatics on these damp pavements.”

“Monsieur Paul must take a cab—­at least to the barrier:  it will not be pleasant to make a scandal in the street.”

“Who will tend Monsieur Paul these two days, now?” This was uttered with manly grief by Charles.

“And whoever will cook for him along the road?” It was Josephine who asked the question with a heavy sigh.

To make an end of this charming scene of Old Virginia faithfulness, I put my best leg out and departed with gymnastic sprightliness.  An instant after I turned my head.

Charles and Josephine were fixed on the doorstep, following me with their regards, and I believed I saw a tear in the left eye of each.  What fidelity!  I smiled in a sort of indulgent and baronial manner, but I felt touched by their sensibility.

Come on!  It is but a twenty-four hours’ separation.

Go forth, then, as I remember saying long ago, without fear and with a manly heart, to meet the dim and shadowy Future.

Edward Strahan.

* * * * *

From Philadelphia to Baltimore.

In 1832 a few adventurous men obtained a charter for a railroad from Baltimore to Port Deposit:  other charters were granted by Delaware and Pennsylvania in succeeding years, and at last in 1838 all were consolidated as the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company, and became a through all-rail line, interrupted only by the Susquehanna and some minor water-courses, under one management, beginning at Philadelphia and ending at Baltimore.  But the country was too young and weak to make this a strong road, either in capital or business.  It struggled along with a heavy debt, poor road-bed, imperfect rail (in some parts the old strap rail), few locomotives and cars, and inconvenient depots, making but little progress up to 1851, when Mr. Samuel M. Felton was brought from Boston to assume the presidency.

Seeing the actual and future importance of the line, some Eastern men bought up the stock, put in the necessary money and encouraged Mr. Felton to begin an entire revolution in the road.  The road-bed was perfected and widened for a double track, new depots erected in Baltimore and Philadelphia, new rails laid, new branches opened; and whereas Mr. Felton found the road with only a single track, 25 locomotives and 308 cars, he left it with many miles of double track, its depots rebuilt, 49 locomotives and 1145 cars.  When he took the road its locomotives traveled 312,840 miles per year, and earned $718,010, at a cost of $252,184.54:  when he left it, borne down by disease, the locomotives traveled 780,537 miles per year, at a cost of $1,960,649.  The capital stock in 1851 was $3,850,000, and paid three and a half per cent.:  it is now $13,486,250, and pays eight per cent.