was not surprised to find Barnsley excessively
neat, clean, and respectable. The town itself
was white enough for all practical purposes; it
was the visitors only—the celebrators of that
mysterious separation of the qualities who
required washing.

Never before, perhaps, had such a demand for
soap and water been made at the King's
Head, and never had Yorkshire chambermaids
been so flustered, hurried, and worried.
Luckily, the crowd of grimy excursionists oozed
out into the yard, and satisfied themselves
with tubs, butts, and horse-troughs. ln the
hotel there were nineteen gentlemen, at one
time, in one bedroom.

The cause of all this hurry and sudden
desire to become purified was the next step in
the train of pleasure—a public dinner (to
celebrate the separation of the qualities) in the
Town-hall of Barnsley. To find the Town-hall
it was only necessary to follow the dinner,
which was being conveyed by a succession of
helps—both male and female—from the hotel,
before mentioned, publicly down the main street,
and through the thronged market-place, on a
full market-day, a distance, perhaps, of an eighth
of a mile. The attendants looked rather flushed
and bewildered, poor things; and the Barnsley
public, with the market men and women,
assembled to watch the combined procession of
food and visitors. A stout young woman, who
was bearing a pair of steaming roasted ducks
along the road, was stopped by a greasy girl
whose cap had been put on in a hurry back part
before, and who carried a vegetable dish. What
the girl said, in the choicest Yorkshire dialect,
must remain a mystery, but the stout young
woman very properly replied, in the same dialect,
that she could not be worritted on such an occasion.
Who would care to be worritted when
carrying a pair of roasted ducks along a
crowded high street, about four o'clock in the
afternoon of a summer's day?

Through the market-place, up some steps,
through a large lower hall, strewn with vegetables
and baskets, like Covent-Garden Market,
past a beadle, and up a stone staircase, and the
excursionists found themselves in the Town-hall
of Barnsley.

The dinner was substantial and profuse, and
apart from the fact that the bulk of the diners
were from London, and the dinner was in Yorkshire,
the travellers by the train of pleasure had
no cause to complain, nor the county to feel
ashamed. Stray coachmen served you, and
ostlers placed dishes before you, as if they were
handling feeds of corn, but that was of little
consequence.

About five o'clock, however, when the separation
of the qualities was proposed from the
chair as a formal toast, and when the visitors
found themselves nearly two hundred miles from
home, drifting into the usual routine of a public
dinner, with the prospect before them of having
to return from Yorkshire to London the same
night, besides doing other things that were on
the programme of the train of pleasure, by the
way, the slight absurdity of their position began
to be faintly apparent.

The toasts, for all this, were received with all
due honours; the convivial excursionists were
got back to their railway carriages about half-
past six P.M.; and about seven o'clock the whole
train of pleasure arrived once more at
Doncaster. Here the new church, a triumph of
revived Gothic architecture, was to be seen, and
the excursionists were accordingly allowed half
an hour to see it. Some lingered at the station;
others found their way to the borders of the
churchyard; while others got into the building,
and shocked the pew-opener by rudely mounting
the pulpits. Finally, the whole of the stray
sheep were penned up once more in their railway
carriages, the lamps were lighted, the train of
pleasure was again upon its way, and—after
investigating three coal-pits, going through a public
dinner, winding up with a very small allowance
of church to a very large allowance of coal and
sack, and travelling nearly four hundred miles to
do all this—the celebrators of the mysterious
separation of the qualities found themselves at
King's-cross some time about midnight.

This is an example of a well-meaning,
hospitable train of pleasure treat, that was given to
a number of visitors in accordance with the
spirit of the age. Train of pleasure Number
Two is another example of what is sold as
recreation, at a time when railways are looking after
the pocket-money of great people and small
people.

To Paris and back for twenty-seven shillings
by the short sea-passage route of Folkestone and
Boulogne, allowing three clear days in the
French capital at the time of the great Italian
army and August fêtes, would seem to promise
well, and did promise well—upon paper.

The first step in this train of pleasure was to
procure a passport; a performance in which a
lawyer or doctor is required to assist, by giving
a letter of recommendation, in which the Foreign
Secretary, for the time being, is moved to be
ungrammatical and sign himself "we," in
consideration of two shillings; and in which the
French Consul, in consideration of four shillings
and threepence more, is induced to endorse
this ungrammatical ticket-of-leave for French
travel. The passport being all right (as it very
properly ought to have been, after the best part
of two days had been expended in obtaining it),
the next step was to get shaved overnight (an
indispensable ceremony, if you wish to qualify
for any train of pleasure), and to be called on
the morning of Saturday, the 13th of August, at
about six o'clock. I dress myself in a style
that I believe peculiarly adapted to the country
to which I am going, I take a close, stuffy,
four-wheeled night cab, and render myself at
the South-Eastern Railway terminus about a
quarter-past seven A.M.

After a breakfast of the same tap of coffee that
I tasted at the Great Northern Railway, with
certain solid additions, supposed to be the proper
fortification for a sea voyage, I take my place
at a quarter to eight A.M. amongst many