must tumble, it is better to have a cushion to
tumble on;" so he always went first-class, but
avoided the express, because punctuality was
aimed at by that train. And what is the good, he
would ask, of aiming at what you can't hit, and
running the risk of being killed into the bargain?

The recommendations of the Grumbleton
juries—and from their experience they are
entitled to great weight—would fill a volume;
but nobody takes much notice of what juries say
over and above their verdicts; one thing,
however, Grumbleton may boast of: it has nearly
ruined the "Accidental Kill and Cure Society."
When the line was opened, everybody took a
sixpenny insurance ticket, but the society has
long ceased to permit any agencies on our line,
and has forsaken us for other quarters, where
they can make money without extra risk.

Certainly a good many of the public have been
killed, and a good many more have been wounded;
but this was to be expected, as the public
always pays in the long run, money or life, for
railways and their doings. But still the
Grumbleton Extension has had a hard time of it,
owing to the lawyers and the doctors, who have
been persuading the credulous public that people
have nervous systems. Drowse would never
believe in nerves, until he was present at a trial
where a man, whose nerves were shaken by the
down train running off the line, and performing
a pas seul in the meadow while the engine and
tender upset in the river, obtained two thousand
pounds damages, when his footman, who had
both legs broken, was considered very lucky to
have his case settled out of court for fifty
pounds.

But the accidents and the actions, the repairs
to the road and rail and the rolling stock, the
salaries to the servants, the rebuilding of the
stations, to say nothing of setting farm-buildings
and ricks on fire, and running through the
gates every now and then, and also killing
stray cattle which break through the fences and
get on the line, do keep us good folks of
Grumbleton in a state of continual lively
excitement. Yet, with all these dangers and
drawbacks, public confidence in the ultimate
success of the line is unabated, and a belief in its
safety steadily increases. This, says Drowse,
ought to be the case; for at first it was no
uncommon thing, on examining the wheels at the
Grumbleton station, to find a round dozen of
them faulty; but now—he states on the
authority of the man who taps the wheels with
a hammer—there are seldom more than two or
three cracked wheels in any train, even in frosty
weather, and these are, generally speaking, in
old third-class carriages, which do not signify.
When a cracked wheel is discovered, the official
always marks it with a bit of chalk; and it is a
singular fact, and worth inquiry, that the worst
accidents on our line have happened by the
breaking of sound wheels, while the cracked
wheels do their work well.

If the company could only raise money enough
to buy a few good engines to pull us Grumbleton
public against a head wind up an incline, without
bursting, or so much as snapping a conducting-
rod, I believe we should soon begin to prosper.
But we offered seven per cent for some money
last year to an insurance company, and the
secretaries laughed at the bare idea of the
proposal, though it is clear enough that it would be
worth our while to borrow it at ten per cent,
though it were only to diminish the number of
actions with which our company is being
continually galled.

Our hope in the ultimate success of the line
lies in the conduct of the shareholders and their
friends. They have imbibed the belief that everybody
requires change of air, and the consequence
is, that season tickets begin to be general. Now
that the shareholders spend quite a little fortune
in support of this new theory, there is, it must
be admitted, an excellent chance for the
company, and the last annual report concludes
in these hopeful terms:

"After all the unforeseen difficulties which
the company has encountered, your directors
believe, with confidence, that the worst is over,
and that, with the efficient and experienced staff
of the company's servants, the Grumbleton
Extension will speedily become what it deserves
to be—a most valuable connecting link between
Grumbleton and the Metropolis."

            LAURENCE STERNE

BY all means let us hear the best of our much-
abused friend Laurence Sterne. In committing
himself to two volumes of lively biography,
bright, liberal, and very interesting, MR. PERCY
FITZGERALD testifies his friendly bias to the
human as well as to the intellectual side of the
great humorist; for, to become the biographer
of a man of genius for the sake of raising him
upon a gibbet, is to carry into literature the taste
of an amateur hangman. Enough has been
said, some of it we think not unjustly, to the
discredit of Sterne's life. Now let us know the
best of it, following a biographer who, as far as
may be, will see Sterne's life and character
reflected in his works.

The author of Tristram Shandy was born in
the south of Ireland, in the barracks at Clonmel,
on the twenty-fourth of November, in the year
seventeen 'thirteen. In Clonmel barracks lay
at that time the Thirty-fourth Regiment, in which
his father, Roger Sterne, was ensign. There
was a branch of the Sterne family naturalised in
Ireland, but Roger belonged to the Sternes who
were at that time a good old Yorkshire family,
settled some at Kilvington, and some at Elvington.
Ensign Roger's grandfather, Richard Sterne,
had been a noted Archbishop of York, who had
thirteen children, and benefited himself so far by
his preferment in the Church as to leave a fine
estate at Kilvington to his eldest son, another
Richard. Another of the archbishop's sons,
Simon, married the heiress of Elvington near
York, and it is this son who had Roger the
ensign for the youngest of his seven children.