A FRIEND of ours, sojourning during the past summer in one of the far-off “shore-towns” of Massachusett’s Bay, was not a little amused one day at the querulous complainings of “one” of the “oldest inhabitants” against railroads; his experience in which consisted in having seen the end of one laid out, and at length the cars running upon it. Taking out his old pipe, on a pleasant summer afternoon, and looking off upon the ocean, and the ships far off and out at sea with the sun upon their sails, he said: “_I_ don’t think much o’ railroads: they aint no kind o’ _justice_ into ’em. Neöw what kind o’ justice is it, when railroads takes one man’s upland and carts it over in wheel-barrers onto another man’s _ma’sh_? What kind o’ ’commodation be they? You can’t go when you _want_ to go; you got to go when the bell rings, or the noisy whistle blows. I tell yeöw it’s payin’ tew much for the whistle. Ef you live a leetle ways off the dee-pot, you got to pay to _git_ to the railroad; and ef you want to go any wheres else ’cept just to the eend on it, you got to pay to go a’ter you git _there_. What kind o’ ’commodation is _that_? Goin’ round the country tew, murderin’ folks, runnin’ over cattle, sheep, and hogs, and settin’ fire to bridges, and every now and then burnin’ up the woods. Mrs. Robbins, down to Cod-p’int, says—and she ought to know, for she’s a pious woman, and belongs to the lower church—she says to me, no longer ago than day-’fore yesterday, that she’d be cuss’d if she didn’t _know_ that they sometimes run over critters _a-purpose_. They did a likely shoat o’ her’n, and never paid for’t, ’cause they was a ‘corporation,’ they said. What kind o’ ’commodation is that? Besides, now I’ve lived here, clus to the dee-pot, ever sence the road started to run, and seen ’em go out and come in; but _I_ never could see that they went so d—d _fast_, nuther!” [Illustration: “I DON’T THINK MUCH O’ RAILROADS.”] _L. Gaylord Clark._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _AN UNMARRIED FEMALE._ [Illustration: “BETSEY HAIN’T HANDSOME.”] I SUPPOSE we are about as happy as the most of folks, but as I was sayin’ a few days ago to Betsey Bobbet, a neighbourin’ female of ours—“Every station-house in life has its various skeletons. But we ort to try to be contented with that spear of life we are called on to handle.” Betsey hain’t married, and she don’t seem to be contented. She is awful opposed to wimmin’s rights—she thinks it is wimmin’s only spear to marry, but as yet she can’t find any man willin’ to lay holt of that spear with her. But you can read in her daily life, and on her eager, willin’ countenance, that she fully realises the sweet words of the poet, “While there is life there is hope.”