In the matter of accidents the comparison with Great Britain is not so overwhelmingly unfavourable as is sometimes supposed.  If, indeed, we accept the figures given by Mullhall in his “Dictionary of Statistics,” we have to admit that the proportion of accidents is five times greater in the United States than in the United Kingdom.  The statistics collected by the Railroad Commissioners of Massachusetts, however, reduce this ratio to five to four.  The safety of railway travelling differs hugely in different parts of the country.  Thus Mr. E.B.  Dorsey shows ("English and American Railways Compared”) that the average number of miles a passenger can travel in Massachusetts without being killed is 503,568,188, while in the United Kingdom the number is only 172,965,362, leaving a very comfortable margin of over 300,000,000 miles.  On the whole, however, it cannot be denied that there are more accidents in American railway travelling than in European, and very many of them from easily preventable causes.  The whole spirit of the American continent in such matters is more “casual” than that of Europe; the American is more willing to “chance it;” the patriarchal regime is replaced by the every-man-for-himself-and-devil-take-the-hindmost system.  When I hired a horse to ride up a somewhat giddy path to the top of a mountain, I was supplied (without warning) with a young animal that had just arrived from the breeding farm and had never even seen a mountain.  Many and curious, when I regained my hotel, were the enquiries as to how he had behaved himself; and it was no thanks to them that I could report that, though rather frisky on the road, he had sobered down in the most sagacious manner when we struck the narrow upward trail.  In America the railway passenger has to look out for himself.  There is no checking of tickets before starting to obviate the risk of being in the wrong train.  There is no porter to carry the traveller’s hand-baggage and see him comfortably ensconced in the right carriage.  When the train does start, it glides away silently without any warning bell, and it is easy for an inadvertent traveller to be left behind.  Even in large and important stations there is often no clear demarcation between the platforms and the permanent way.  The whole floor of the station is on one level, and the rails are flush with the spot from which you climb into the car.  Overhead bridges or subways are practically unknown; and the arriving passenger has often to cross several lines of rails before reaching shore.  The level crossing is, perhaps, inevitable at the present stage of railroad development in the United States, but its annual butcher’s bill is so huge that one cannot help feeling it might be better safeguarded.  Richard Grant White tells how he said to the station-master at a small wayside station in England, a propos of an overhead footbridge:  “Ah, I suppose you had an accident through someone crossing the line, and then erected that?” “Oh, no,” was the reply, “we don’t wait for an accident.”  Mr. White makes the comment, “The trouble in America is that we do wait for the accident.”