They leaped upon him, and squeezed from him
many curses, some tears, hundreds of groans,
and thirty roubles.

Next day, M. Æneas Eglantine Cassecruche,
sober but not penitent, was comfortably sitting
in a warm first-class railway carriage, on his way
to the Prussian frontier, banished for ever from
Russia as a dangerous alien, an outrageous
republican, a subversive democratic emperor's
nose-breaking socialist, not to be discharged
until safely carted out and turned loose in the
wilds of Paris. So M. Cassecruche journeyed
rejoicing at his ruse de guerre and his timely
escape from herds of enraged and hungry
creditors; rejoicing at his gratuitous dinner, at
his vexatious landlord's discomfiture, at his
cheap and luxurious journey from St. Petersburg
to Paris.

          LET IT PASS!

"Let former grudges pass."
                            SHAKESPEARE.

BE not swift to take offence;
                                Let it pass!
Anger is a foe to sense;
                                Let it pass!
Brood not darkly o'er a wrong
Which will disappear ere long;
Rather sing this cheery song—
                                Let it pass!
                                Let it pass!

Strife corrodes the purest mind;
                                Let it pass!
As the unregarded wind,
                                Let it pass!
Any vulgar souls that live
May condemn without reprieve;
'Tis the noble who forgive.
                                Let it pass!
                                Let it pass!

Echo not an angry word;
                                Let it pass!
Think how often you have erred;
                                Let it pass!
Since our joys must pass away,
Like the dewdrops on the spray,
Wherefore should our sorrows stay?
                                Let them pass!
                                Let them pass!

If for good you've taken ill;
                                Let it pass!
Oh! be kind and gentle still;
                                Let it pass!
Time at last makes all things straight;
Let us not resent, but wait,
And our triumph shall be great:
                                Let it pass!
                                Let it pass!

Bid your anger to depart,
                                Let it pass!
Lay these homely words to heart,
                               "Let it pass!"
Follow not the giddy throng;
Better to be wronged than wrong;
Therefore sing the cheery song—
                                Let it pass!
                                Let it pass!

INDIAN RAILWAYS.

IN TWO PARTS.

PART I.

WHEN one happens to prove a true prophet,
it is as well to mention the fact. Writing in
1856 upon "The Road in India," * I said
that for traffic purposes it would soon become
a thing of the past. The rail having at that
time made but small progress, and most of the
projects which have since become practicabilities
having then no existence, the assertion was
not founded upon formal data. But the success
of the first experiment was such as to justify
the anticipation that the system would be
generally adopted. For though in its infancy, the
rail was evidently vigorous and flourishing. It
was a Herculean infancy, in fact, against which
the serpents of prejudice and timidity had no
chance. Directly it was strong enough to
strangle them out of the way, it began to
develop in a marvellous manner; and behold, at
the beginning of 1864, my prophecy well-nigh
accomplished.
* See Household Words, vol. xii., page 517.

Twenty or thirty years ago, we might have
made railways all over India as easily as now.
But only reformers ventured to propose such
things in those days; and reformers in India—
as elsewhere, indeed, for that matter—were
considered firebrands, and were sometimes
made martyrs of. It was not every man who
was prepared for the exciting career thus
offered; so the majority of our compatriots
in India preferred to go quietly with the
stream, and forbore to disturb waters which, the
quieter they were kept, yielded the larger fish.

The official "Map of India, showing the Lines
of Railway in the year 1863," displays at a
glance the thorough nature of the new system
now in progress. From every great port in the
empire there is a line of railway in actual
operation, and rapidly effecting a communication
with every important point inland. But, before
tracing the course of the several lines now in
operation, or in process of construction, the
reader, who does not happen to be a man about
Asia, may possibly desire to know what an
Indian railway is like.

It is of no use disguising the fact. An Indian
railway is not exactly the sort of thing you
would expect, after working up your imagination
from much reading of the Arabian Nights.
Indeed, anything that the Stephensons could do
in the way of locomotion would be tame after
Prince Hussein's carpet; and being necessarily
confined to terra firma, a steam-engine even in
India could not be expected to do anything in
the style of the Enchanted Horse. Still it is
surrounded by many peculiarities worth noting,