My railroad journey by Liverpool was not without an incident that interested me. In the carriage in which I had taken my seat, was a man--accompanied by his wife, their child, and a servant girl who nursed the "baby." I had not been ten minutes in the company of this interesting group, before I became convinced that it was worthy of being studied, although like a Latin lesson, the study was not altogether agreeable. The husband was a striking example, of how a sensible man may sometimes be governed by a silly woman. The child was about two years and a half old; and the fact, that it had already learnt to cry, seemed to its mother something to be surprised at! The selfishness which causes that painful reserve, or want of sociability, observable amongst the travelling English of the middle class, was in the case of the woman in question, subdued by a silly conceit about her child--which she appeared to regard as a little lump of concentrated perfection. Before we had been in the carriage half-an-hour, she had told me its age, the number of its teeth, what it did, and did not like to eat, along with several remarkable things it had been heard to say. "But is it not strange," asked she, after a long speech in manifestation of its many virtues, "that a child of its age cannot walk?" "There is nothing strange about it," muttered the husband, "how can the child learn to walk, when it never has an opportunity of trying? It'll never have a chance to try, as long as there is a servant girl in the United Kingdom strong enough to carry it about. I'll answer for that." "John, dear, how can you talk so?" exclaimed the mother of the blessed baby, "you have not the least consideration, or you would not expect an infant to be a man." During the two hours I shared the carriage with this interesting family, I heard that mother use to her child about one-fourth of all the words in the English language--adding to each word the additional syllable "ee." When the father ventured to open his mouth, and speak to the child in plain English, the mother would accuse him of scolding it; and then the little demon would set up a loud yelling, from which it would not desist, until mother and nurse had called it every pet name they could think of--adding to each the endearing syllable "ee." Becoming perfectly satisfied at the observations I had made of the peculiarities of this pleasant family, I took the first opportunity of "changing carriages;" and left the fond mother to enjoy, undisturbed, the caresses of her spoilt pet. Perhaps, had Fortune been a little kinder to myself, I might have felt less afflicted in such society. But as I had no intention of ever becoming a family man, I thought the knowledge of "what to avoid," was hardly worth acquiring--at the expense of being submitted to the annoyance that accompanied the lesson. Volume Three, Chapter XXIX. BROWN OF BIRMINGHAM.