pliance with almost countless arbitrary requirements that entail a tremendous expense on the railway company, and have, in considerable part, no real bearing on safety. Many of these requirements are traditional rather than expedient; if railways were to be built de novo in the year 1906 it is certain that the Board of Trade would be immensely shocked, if not insulted, at the suggestion that a 100-ton locomotive should rely on wheel flanges less than one and a half inches deep to keep it on the rails, at a speed of seventy miles an hour. But the traveler who is not a shareholder has no occasion to worry over excessive safety, and he can feel assured that every British railway on which he is permitted to travel has passed a rigid examination at the hands of one of the most critical examining bodies in the world.

The Railway Department of the Board of Trade has four principal inspectors, who are retired army officers, at present three lieutenant-colonels and a major. These gentlemen naturally had no railway experience prior to their appointment; in fact, the very circumstance of their army career indicates the impersonal, non-partisan service which is expected of them. Without technical skill, except that which they have acquired in the prosecution of their duties, they stand for dignity and absolute integrity, as representatives of the government. One inspector personally investigates every accident, every new line which it is proposed to open for traffic, every installation of a new type of signal, and the like, and receives testimony much like a circuit judge, except that the proceedings are informal. In due course of time he presents his report, quoting the important testimony, and adding conclusions and recommendations of his own which have practically the force of statute, because of the power possessed by the Board to require compliance on the part of the companies. The reasons gravely alleged by the Board as the cause of a wreck often fail to convince; the remedies sug

gested may do nothing more than reiterate the need of care in train-working; but the limelight is turned squarely on all the operating methods and physical conditions contributory to the accident, and any real evils that may be discovered are dealt with in no uncertain manner.. For example, at the famous Hall Road accident, on the electrified portion of the Lancashire and Yorkshire, the whole system of facing-point switches throughout the country was under trial, although the primary cause of the accident was an order to proceed, wrongly given, by a signalman. The country was aroused by the accident; but the Board of Trade went about its investigation without haste or hysteria, and laid the entire blame where it belonged, on the mental confusion of the signalman. The American press as a whole can be relied on always to assume, tacitly or sonorously, that a serious railroad accident is due to "corporate greed," implying that if the shareholders cared to spend what they should, they could bring about a condition of perfection that would make accidents unheard of. The British press does not share this attitude of mind, because it places perfect confidence in its Board of Trade. When the inspectors of the Hall Road disaster fully exonerated the facing-point switch from the charge that it was accessory to accidents in general, the press had no more to say on this point. It is easy to imagine the heroic stand which our sensational papers would have taken in such a discussion. They would have formed their own conclusion months before the Board of Trade hearings were finished, exonerating the poor signalman, and incidentally publishing his portrait, placing all blame on the directors, and appealing to high Heaven and President Roosevelt for a law requiring the abolition of facing-point switches.

The British observer is naturally surprised to see that our safety measures are enforced primarily by the newspapers; he is scandalized to learn that the cause of some of our worst accidents is never

known, and hence that preventive measures do not follow. For example, the Mentor wreck, on the Lake Shore, is still unexplained, after incomplete and unscientific examinations made by coroners' juries and the inefficient State Railroad Commission. Two things, however, have always worked to hinder really useful work by any national railroad commission in this country: the separate state government system, and the fact that internal communications played so vital a part in the development and in the prosperity of the land that public opinion, at the outset, was not at all critical. What was wanted was railroads; if they could be safe railroads, so much the better; but this was not the essential thing. The early lines across the plains, with all their crudities, were so infinitely superior to pack trains, both in efficiency and in safety, that their shortcomings were not judged harshly. Now we have awakened to the fact that a preventable accident is a criminal thing, and we hold our railroads in low esteem because they cannot at once alter their physical structure to conform to our point of view. It is fair to say, however, that we very greatly need an institution with inspection powers like those of the British Board of Trade, but with expense ideas tempered to the wide difference in situation.

To revert from the Board of Trade to the hedge characteristic of British lines: the baggage system, plus the cab arrangements, never fails to delight an American. He never knows, and never can be made to know, what there is in the system that offers the slightest hindrance to the professional collector of other people's baggage; he is fully convinced that the porter would place on his hansom any bag he designated as his own, without a moment's hesitation. In a country where checks are not used in ordinary baggage handling, the entire system rests on the simple affirmation, "This is my bag." Yet the claim-departments of British railways find that theft of baggage from station platforms is practically a negligible

item in their accounting. From the standpoint of the ordinary traveler, the British method is incomparably superior to ours. A four-wheeler in London costs a shilling for the first two miles. Add a few odd pence for each piece of baggage carried outside, and construe the distance liberally, and you may arrive at the station, with all your paraphernalia, for a ridiculously small sum. English visitors to New York habitually dine in tweeds on the night of their arrival, because the expressman, who lightly guarantees immediate delivery of their belongings, finds it more convenient to call the following morning.

The Englishman travels with two kitbags, a hat-box, an ulster, and a rug, and never carries any of these things himself. He marvels at the hidden resources of the American dress-suit case, not understanding the stern necessity that requires us to provide apparel for the day in such form that we can manage it without relying on the porter or the expressman. It has always seemed to me that the polite porters who swarm about English railway stations were, in the last analysis, responsible for the abominable coldness of the trains; for without the porter's assistance the traveler could not manage his ulster and his rug, and would be unable to regard a railway journey as akin to a drive in an open carriage. Our trains are overheated, and we remove superfluous outer garments when we travel; English trains are really not heated at all, and the traveler must dress as he would dress on board ship.

Taking into consideration all the differences, great and small, it is hard to say with conviction that the railway system of either country offers any marked advantage over the other in the comfort it affords the traveler. England is a land of short distances; and, speaking of the lines as a whole, they subordinate their freight business to their passenger business. In this country we unhesitatingly subordinate the passenger traffic. As a result, the English service offers many more shortdistance trains, which run with infinitely

greater punctuality. But the long-distance traffic, - that is to say, the service between England and Scotland, lacks many comfort-giving features to which we are accustomed. The traveler in the fall and winter months is likely to be chiefly concerned by the coldness of the trains, mentioned above. He is also expected to remain in one place throughout the journey; there is no library car at the front of the train, no observation smoker at the rear. In recent years an excellent dining-car service has been maintained on the best trains; but dining-cars are still somewhat of a specialty, rather than an essential feature of a through train. As an alternative there is the basket lunch, a cold chicken, lettuce salad, bread, butter, and cheese, designed to be eaten from the lap. Personally, I am inclined to think that an American dining-car affords more nourishment and considerably more variety than does a basket lunch; but this is a moot point. The dining-car at least gives the traveler a chance to move about, and to substitute oak and rattan for plush. The English dining-car, when found, is so thoroughly satisfactory that it may rest quite exempt from the criticism of a reasonably philosophic traveler.

The same is true of the British sleeping-car, which, like the diner, is a recent development, but is now always to be found on the Scotch night expresses. Each passenger has a narrow compartment to himself; there are no upper berths, and there is an individual washstand in the compartment. If the journey begins

at bed-time and ends at getting-up time, the traveler will be thoroughly comfortable; but if he is bound to a point not reached by his rising hour,-Aberdeen, for example, he must needs make up his own berth and remain in his compartment; the cars are not convertible into day coaches, and he must be content with a basket breakfast, likewise eaten from the berth.

The upshot of a comparison between English and American railways is that each country has provided itself with the system that, broadly considered, answers its own needs the best, and that, when all circumstances are taken into account, neither has much to learn from the other. Certain great defects stand out in each; English railway financing and American railway carelessness are both deserving of censure. Yet these defects are quite explainable in their outgrowth from the physical conditions at hand, and they are not amenable to any off-hand remedy. Likewise, certain points of especial attractiveness, such as the English baggage system and the punctuality of trains, and the American luxury of through travel, have arisen from a complicated set of local circumstances, and could not be transplanted unless all the circumstances were transplanted as well. Most forcible of all is the impression gained by such a study that the essential belief, the very creed and doctrine of one country, as regards the economics of its railway working, may not be so much as discussed in another, where the same ultimate problem is gotten at in a wholly different way.

IT was not because its rich heart failed that the Hinterland was abandoned; the reason was simply its mountainous isolation from the railroads, which could not, after all, be induced to come that way. For the same reason it was bought from the gold-seekers by a man who was seeking something else.

He lived in the manager's house (though by no means as the manager had lived); he let the shaft fill up with water and the hoist decay; he put the silent stamp-mill to uses for which it had not been intended. When its white beams grew dim it was as full of shadows as an ancestral garret; but its corruption was more of rust than of moth, and it gloomed in sudden abysses unknown to attics the most far-reaching. It was a building of many stories, with the floors left out. There were platforms and galleries and bits of staging where steep stairs paused and went breathlessly on. Among sleeping wheels and sagging belts and crowd of beams the stamps hung, ranked like the pipes of a great

organ.

The bottom of the mill was floored, and heated by a stove. It was in some sort furnished, and had an air of detachment from the gaunt heights above it. On the rough table there was apt to be an incongruous choice of books and papers. There could be no doubt of the unusualness of a piano in such surroundings; but this one was the better suited to their scale for being a concert grand.

Early on a summer morning the man who had bought the Hinterland for solitude sat at the keys, governing them masterfully. He seemed to listen less to what he played than to sounds in the tangled gloom above him. There were two voices up there, hooting and calling to each other with joyful inconsequence and much

awakening of sound among the rafters. The man hushed his chords, and gave with precision the single notes of Siegfried's horn. At this signal the young shouters, boy and girl, presented themselves in cat-like descent of the stairs. Their surefootedness was part of a beauty singularly dependent upon absolute form. They were straight-haired, narrow-eyed, sunburned without mercy; but faultlessly slender, with clear, interested faces. It proved the power of the type that in each a reminder of the other was welcome, the resemblance between them was their final charm.

The man at the piano smiled as they dropped from the last flight beside him. He kept a breathing of chords beneath his hands. His utterance was deliberate.

"I wonder if you are ever likely to grow up. It is hard to give you credit for your twenty years."

"That's only because we've been singing so badly," said the girl with affectionate impertinence. "Last week you were talking about the 'mouths of babes.' Take Kit before me, won't you? Poor little Clara's tired."

"There are going to be occasions when she'll have to sing whether she is tired or not."

"Yes," said Clara comfortably, “but this is not one of them;" and she stretched herself out on the floor. Her skirts clung to her long slenderness. Both her clothes and her brother's showed an unmistakable cut and style, but elimination was evidently their principle of dress. They carried it so far as to the wearing of sandals, no compromise called by that name, but the sandal of the Greek, bound with a thong between the toes upon feet accustomed to exposure.

The man at the piano had threatening

gray brows and a splendid, unyielding old face. He looked down at Clara, and she relinquished her position of insubordinate rest, and went up the steps of the first platform. This was but the height of a stage above the floor, of loose boards sloping back to the wall of stamps. With a defiant yet business-like appearance of being under fire, Kit and Clara faced their teacher at this elevation, and by turns sent a solitary young voice through the mill. For young voices they were unusual, and they showed a master's training; but their early finish seemed rather to emphasize in each a certain disappointing quality; they tantalized with a hint of power that was not fulfilled. One could not name the lack.

There were lapses from his standard, however, which the teacher found no difficulty in naming. His dispraise rose into despairing figures of speech.

"Kit!" he groaned. "Am I to sit here, after all these years, and hear you breathe! Give me those notes unveiled! Keep your breath behind them, man! Clear! clear!"

It needed imagination to detect a stain on Kit's pure tones; his teacher's irritation may have been roused in part by a subtler insufficiency. With an expression of relief, he turned back the pages of his music, and said, "Now. Together!"

On the platform the two singers eyed each other soberly; the notes of the accompaniment lingered to include them, and they sang in unison. It was the fitting of lock and key. These voices had been made upon the same day, and tuned to an indivisible third. They had rushed together, and out of them had risen one voice; but it was rich from the hearts of two. It was more, for the suggested charm which had failed in either one woke in their union and caught the listener's breath.

To the singers this awakening of power brought a delicious freedom, a happy self-consciousness that became them like a smile, though no smile could find its way to their earnest faces. The teacher did not look at them. In the searching

support of his accompaniment one might almost fancy a caress, but he said nothing.

The singers slipped down from their stage. The young man crossed to the table, and turned over some manuscript scores, his eyes interpreting them as the less musically educated read print. The girl stood by the old musician with a little appeal in her attitude.

"Not good, Uncle Gregory?" she questioned.

He faced round at her abruptly. "I've not given you much praise to work on lately? Is that it?"

"We

Clara's mouth was tremulous. don't want praise to work on, but we want it when we have worked," she said. "The opera is yours, Uncle Gregory, but Kit and I belong to the opera, and you ought n't to make us sing in the dark."

Gregory Borgne smiled to himself. "It's a good place to sing. Madame Mantegna would say, 'Learn by the footlights, and you'll be able to sing there.' I say, 'Learn in the dark, and you will never notice the footlights.' But she believes in hard work at the bottom. She will tell you whether you can sing or not."

"What does she know about it that you don't know?"

"She has the standards of the world, my dear. You don't suppose they are made up here in the mountains?"

Clara leaned against his shoulder and fingered the keys. "We may not be makers of standards, but we're makers of music, Uncle Greg. Tell me, was n't that music we made just now?"