I didn’t like the looks of the cars. I can prove in a moment by any traveler that our trains are infinitely more luxurious. I can see where there isn’t heat enough, and where one lavatory for men and women on any train, let alone a first-class one, is an abomination, and so on and so forth; but still, and notwithstanding, I say the English railway service is better. Why? Because it’s more human; it’s more considerate. You aren’t driven and urged to step lively and called at in loud, harsh voices and made to feel that you are being tolerated aboard something that was never made for you at all, but for the employees of the company. In England the trains are run for the people, not the people for the trains. And now that I have that one distinct difference between England and America properly emphasized I feel much better. CHAPTER V THE RIDE TO LONDON At last the train was started and we were off. The track was not so wide, if I am not mistaken, as ours, and the little freight or goods cars were positively ridiculous--mere wheelbarrows, by comparison with the American type. As for the passenger cars, when I came to examine them, they reminded me of some of our fine street cars that run from, say Schenectady to Gloversville, or from Muncie to Marion, Indiana. They were the first-class cars, too--the English Pullmans! The train started out briskly and you could feel that it did not have the powerful weight to it which the American train has. An American Pullman creaks audibly, just as a great ship does when it begins to move. An American engine begins to pull slowly because it has something to pull--like a team with a heavy load. I didn’t feel that I was in a train half so much as I did that I was in a string of baby carriages. Miss X. and her lover, Miss E. and her maid, Barfleur and I comfortably filled one little compartment; and now we were actually moving, and I began to look out at once to see what English scenery was really like. It was not at all strange to me, for in books and pictures I had seen it all my life. But here were the actual hills and valleys, the actual thatched cottages, and the actual castles or moors or lovely country vistas, and I was seeing them!