Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/378

358 smoking was allowed either in station or train, for fear of fire. Indeed, the terrors of railway travelling were still great, and the Punch of the day illustrates the spirit in which a journey was taken by a picture of the would-be traveller being presented with an undertaker's card ere he set forth on what might prove to be his last venture. It is not far to seek a parallel to-day in the raw beginnings of modern mechanical progression. And yet the speed in these days was but twenty miles an hour, and thirty years later it was still under thirty. True, the signalling was as yet rudimentary and insufficient. Sometimes a candle burning in a window told the driver whether to go on or stop, sometimes a lamp swung from a high post guided him to his destination. Stations sprang up with great rapidity, over 4,000 being built in thirty years. But all this, and much more, may be learnt from a comparison of the first Bradshaw's Railway Guide published in 1839, six pages in length, with that published to-day, containing a thousand pages of intricacies. But in all this early travelling it was the third-class passenger who suffered most severely. A rich man might have his comfortable carriage placed on a railway truck and travel in it, but the third-class