This was my first real observation of a genuine “talking machine.” In this coach to-day we had another, but of the feminine gender, which, under ordinary acceptances, would seem to be more in the general fitness of things, when coming from the sex to whom speech is so easy. This old lady sat in the corner at the forward end of the car. She had come from Ohio, and her talk ran equally as well upon ordinary sublunary things as upon those of more elevated character. The Sphinx, or the Delphic Oracle, or who was Junius?--it made no difference, for she was equally at home on all these. Our ball-going city chaps quickly saw a place and time for fun. First, they chaffed her, and squarely they got their answers back, rather to their discomfiture. They hit upon politics finally. Just what hers were I did not make out, but at this subject she rose in her might, and standing with the index finger boldly extended, laid it down right volubly--rather more than the ball-going boys bargained for, and to the infinite amusement of all the other passengers. Our uniformed conductor touched her gently upon the shoulder and requested her to sit down. Silence for a few moments followed, but the fun was too much for the boys to lose it, and she as a talking-machine ran too easily to quit. Again upon her feet, again the index finger, and another request to sit down. Her station reached at last, the conductor and brakeman with alacrity help her off and deposit her parcels with her on the platform. The conductor raises his hand, a “toot” from the locomotive, and away. The conductor jumps aboard, heaves a great sigh, and almost audibly says--if not in words, at anyrate in thought and action--“I’m glad to get rid of that talking-machine.” “Supper! Twenty minutes for supper!” and for fifty cents we get a substantial, good meal and are not particularly hurried. That reminds me to say that those places where they give the traveller a good meal are always known and commented upon and sought after. Cornwall, for instance, is noted in many travellers’ memories for its pies. So the traveller who happens there at the time of blueberries--ye gods, he’ll have a feast for a king! Then again, of some railway restaurants I am sorry to defame our our fair country by saying that they consume very much of the traveller’s precious twenty minutes before they wait on him, and he pays his fifty cents for a sight of the empty dishes and the seductive odor of cooked meat in the room behind the screens, but not yet served up to the pilgrim having only twenty precious minutes. The eating-house at Orangeville did not on some former occasions strike me as being particularly alert to save the traveller’s precious lunch time.