Pullman and Wagner are as gorgeously decorated as gilding, plating, velvet, and damask can make them.  The former gentleman is likely to live long after his death in the title of his cars.  One takes a Pullman (of course, only a share of a Pullman) as one takes a Hansom.  Pullman and sleeping-car have become synonymous terms likely to last the wear of time.  Travelling from sunrise to sunset through a country which offers but few changes to the eye, and at a rate which in the remoter districts seldom exceeds twenty miles an hour, is doubtless a very tiresome occupation; still it has much to relieve the tedium of what under the English system of railroad travel would be almost insupportable.  The fact of easy communication being maintained between the different cars renders the passage from one car to another during motion a most feasible undertaking.  One can visit the various cars and inspect their occupants, and to a man travelling to obtain information this is no small boon.  Americans are always ready to enter into conversation, and though many queer fish will doubtless be met with in such interviews, still as one is certain to fall in with persons from all parts of the Union—­easters, Southerners, Western men, and Californians—­the experiment of “knocking around the cars” is well worth the trial of any person who is not above taking human nature, as we take the weather, just as it comes.

The individual known by the title of “train-boy” is also worth some study.  He is oftentimes a grown-up man, but more frequently a most precocious boy; he is the agent for some enterprising house in Chicago, New York, or Philadelphia, or some other large town, and his aim is to dispose of a very miscellaneous collection of mental and bodily nourishment.  He usually commences operations with the mental diet, which he serves round in several courses.  The first course consists of works of a high moral character standard English novels in American reprints, and works of travel or biography.  These he lays beside each passenger, stopping now and then to recommend one or the other for some particular excellence of morality or binding.  Having distributed a portion through the car, he passes into the next car, and so through the train.  After a few minutes delay he returns again to pick up the books and to settle with any one who may be disposed to retain possession of one.  After the lapse of a very short time he reappears with the second course of literature.  This usually consists of a much lower standard of excellence —­Yankee fun, illustrated periodicals of a feeble nature, and cheap reprints of popular works.  The third course, which soon follows, is, however, a very much lower one, and it is a subject for regret on the part of the moralist that the same powers of persuasion which but a little time ago were put forth to advocate the sale of some works of high moral excellence should now be exerted to push a vigorous circulation of the “Last Sensation,” “The Dime