it, faded from our sight, we saw the sun, and were scurrying through the green fields and the real delights of rural England. From Victoria Station to New Haven is not the most interesting trip that can be imagined, although there are picturesque towns, waving fields of grass, with an occasional bit of woods, that relieve the journey of some of its unpleasant features, and make it rather enjoyable. But by the time one has gone through miles and miles of such scenery, the towns become monotonous, each succeeding field of grain waves just as the one before it did, the woods, miniature forests, are just alike, and, leaning back in the corner of the compartment, the time is spent in dozing until eleven o'clock, when the train rushes into the station at New Haven, and we struggle through the dimly lighted passages to the dock, where lies the steamer that is to take us across that bugbear of all tourists, the English Channel. And then we have the satisfaction of learning that the tide is not in, and the steamer will not leave for two hours and a half. It is a dark, windy night, and there is no way to spend the time save by pacing up and down the narrow confines of the deck, watching the enormous cranes loading huge packages of merchandize into the vessel's hold; or taking a stroll along the dock, regardless of the momentary danger of stumbling over an unseen cable and pitching headlong into the water. There is one other way of passing the time. Whenever a tourist can find nothing else to do, he eats. There is in the station at New Haven the inevitable lunch counter, with the orthodox ham sandwich and bitter beer. To this everybody was attracted as by a magnet. There is no escaping it. No body was hungry; but it seems to be a law of Nature that you must eat ham sandwiches while you wait at railroad stations. And in obedience to this law, a cart-load of the sandwiches were devoured and paid for. [Illustration: SANDWICHES AT NEW HAVEN.] [Sidenote: THE LONG WAIT.] The New Haven sandwich is very like its London brother, only it is a trifle thicker. The cutter is not as expert as the London professional, but he makes it just as indigestible. It is a trifle worse, because it is a trifle larger. But time goes on, no matter how slowly it seems to move, and the tide comes in, although its rise cannot be seen, and so, just before one o'clock the warning whistle was given, the passengers took their places, the great wheels began to revolve, and we slowly steamed out past the breakwater into the channel. The necessity for making the boat's landing so far away from the deep water cannot be understood. But so it is. Instead of running the track down to the dock and establishing the station there, where there would be no occasion to wait for the tide, the steamer goes up an arm of the sea about an eighth of a mile, and has to stay there until the water is deep enough to allow the passage to be made.