Into these steam is admitted from a boiler.
The hot liquor (for the mixture is nearly liquid
when hot) fizzes and bubbles and tosses about,
until everything is thoroughly mixed with
everything else. Then it is transferred to large flat
wooden vessels, where it is stirred about while
cooling. When cooled, it is shovelled into well-
made barrels or casks, and these barrels are
sent to all the principal stations, where the
grease-men administer the yellow food to the
axle-boxes. The substance is required by tons
weight every week, on the longer lines of rail.

Even the stationery department at these great
depôts is one necessarily of magnitude. Every
station-master uses up a great deal of paper
every day; for he has to make returns to
headquarters about trains, carriages, waggons,                                   passengers, stores, goods, and messages. Then
the tickets. These important little bits of
cardboard, the representatives of the money
which the company are to receive from the
public, are cherished with, the utmost care.
No rude hand is allowed to tamper with them.
A special department is allotted to them, with
a special superintendent, and a special staff
of assistants. They may be purchased in a
partly printed state, or singly as oblong bits of
white or coloured cardboard, at a shilling or two
per thousand. If the company print their own
tickets, there are founts of type for the printers,
and beautiful machines for giving to each ticket,
as it passes through the press, a number
different from that of every other ticket of the
same kind; the machine registers its own work,
and piles the tickets up into dense columnar
masses, in which, the whole of them take their
places according to their numbers. Millions
upon millions are required every year by each of
the great companies. Each station-master or
booking-clerk sends to the superintendent of this
department for supplies as fast as he wants them;
and as there are tickets from every station to
almost every other station, with single and return
tickets, and also tickets for different classes of
carriages, the total number of kinds is almost
incredible. When every farthing is registered
taken by the booking-clerks for these tickets,
and all matters squared up, then—and not
till then—are the battered old tickets
consigned to the pulp-vat, there to be worked up
again into new cardboard and new tickets; they
suffer a metempsychosis, springing up into a new
state of existence.

And then the clothing. We do not think
much about this when we see the railway
servants busily engaged at the station; but it is
an item that costs the principal companies very
many thousands of pounds annually. When
Betsy Harris is going down into the country
to take a housemaid's place, her black box,
studded with brass nails, and elaborately tied
up, is carried from the cab or the omnibus
through the station, and across the platform to
the luggage van. The hard-working fellow who
renders his services in this way may shoulder
Betsy Harris's box; or, he may have shoulders,
arms, and hands alike occupied with those
multifarious articles which elderly ladies always take
with them when they travel; but it is quite certain
that, in the course of an average day, these
porters carry many heavy loads on their
shoulders. It would not be fair to them,
with their small wages, that their own clothes
should be speedily brought to Vestiges of
(tailors') Creation in this way. Besides, there
ought to be means for distinguishing the
company's porters from other persons. There are,
therefore, strong suits of velveteen, fustian,
or corduroy provided, with shoulder-pieces of
extra thickness. Then the railway policemen,
the smart upright fellows who have certain
powers entrusted to them to "take up"
offenders, by special clauses in railway acts—
they must have their snugly-fitting dresses,
provided by the company. The engine-drivers and
stokers, who are knocked about in all sorts of
weather, with perhaps a torrid zone close to
their knees and a frigid zone about their heads
and necks, are not, we believe, clothed by the
companies. The guards, especially those for
the crack passenger-trains, are not only clothed
by the company, but are adorned with silvery-
looking accoutrements of various kinds, which
give them an air of importance. All the
official clothing (if livery is too humble a
word, we will call it uniform) of the porters,
signalmen, pointsmen, gatekeepers, policemen,
guards, &c., bears in some kind of embroidery
the initials of the company, and the number of
the man. Let us say that our company is the
Great Grand East West North Southern Amalgamated
Central Junction Alliance—a name which
includes every other, and is, therefore, sure to
be right; in such case the embroidered initials
on the collar would be GGEWNSACJA,
together with a particular number appropriated
to each person, to distinguish him from his
fellows. The clothing department in the
storehouse is a large space well occupied with bales
and shelves and packages all around. There
are contracts for the supply of various kinds of
cloth, and other contracts for working up the
cloth into garments. As it is not deemed right
to put round men into square holes, nor square
men into round holes, the garments are made of
different sizes and proportions, insomuch that
each man has a chance of being tolerably well
fitted—better so than in the army, where there
are rather too few sizes for so large a number
and variety of men. Some, if not all, of the
worn-out uniforms are returned into store, to be
disposed of in those inscrutable ways which
distinguish the last days of a suit of clothes.

Wonderful it is to think what becomes of
all sorts of things when worn out. Who
can tell, beyond the fact that nothing is really
thrown away? Many articles of iron, when
worn out for their original uses, are converted
into others; and when these also are worn to
weakness, they start into new life as scrap-iron,
eagerly purchased by iron-workers, and better
fitted than newly smelted iron for a large
variety of purposes. Worn-out handles, beading,
and name-plates of brass, various pieces of gun-