We left by rail at nine in the morning. The cars were large, convenient, and elegant. For first-class passengers they were divided into apartments for six, and were lined with red plush. The second class were quite as good, but lined with drab; and the chief difference was in the price, which, being high in the first class, makes the company more _select_. In all the cars _smoking_ is allowed, unless notice is posted on the outside to the contrary. In our compartment, which was one of the _interdicted_, there were three ladies and as many men, only one of them a smoker; and he kept on, regardless of the notice and the company. The third-class cars had plain board seats with no backs; but they were clean, and very decent-looking people rode in them. A fourth class were like our cattle cars, only not so good, for ours are well ventilated, whereas these were close, and were filled with dirty people, standing up, and getting what air they could through one or two little windows. Yet these people were generally smoking, their poverty compelling them to ride like cattle, but not prevailing to make them give up tobacco. We passed through large pine forests. Wind-mills were frequent, as they are in flat countries, where no waterfall power can be had. Women were at work repairing the railroads; showing that here woman has her “rights,” as the women reformers call the privilege of doing any thing that men do. Of course they are degraded, as they will be with us just as fast as public sentiment allows them to assume the duties that do not belong to their sex. The waiting-rooms at the stations are restaurants also, and beer is guzzled incessantly. Little children drink beer with their parents. Vast tracts of level country are on our right and left. Not a hill is in sight. The scenery is uninterrupted prairie. Passengers are informed, by notice posted in the cars, that they can have a dinner served at certain stations ahead, and that the conductors will send on the order by telegraph without charge. At all the stations cake and beer are passed along by waiters at the windows of the cars, and you may take in the dishes if you please, and leave them at the next station. _Frankfort-on-the-Oder_ is a venerable town of 37,000 inhabitants, memorable as the scene of a great battle in 1759, when Frederick the Great was defeated by the Russians and Austrians. We crossed the Oder at Castion, the bridge being strongly fortified, as if war were imminent or guns relied on as the best peace preservers. Immense tracts of peat-beds are on the route, and women are at work wheeling heavy loads of it just cut out, and men cutting it, the women being made to do the hardest work. [Illustration: FRANKFORT DINNER-TABLE.]