metal, and yellow metal, and copper, used in
locomotives, are always welcome in the melting-
pot. The wood of old carriages and waggons,
when the railway companies have no further
use for it, passes into the hands of persons who
are wonderfully ingenious in devising new
appliances for it. A man may, we know, be writing
on a sheet of paper, the flaxen fibres of which
once formed part of his own shirt; and he may
in like manner be handling many a pretty or
useful article of leather, the material of which
once formed a cushion whereon his portly form
reposed in a railway carriage. If all the thousand-
and-one articles in the storehouse could tell their
own tale—how they were born, how they have
lived or are living, and what will become of them
when their present state of existence is brought
to a close—it would be a tale full of much that
could and ought to interest us. But we
certainly do not think of tales or novels or romances
here; the place is rather rough, rather dark,
rather dusty, rather cold, rather hard, and it
requires a little work of imagination to get into
the real poetry that is to be met with, even in
the railway system.

All sorts of things are looked over at periodical
intervals, to see whether the stock on hand
corresponds with the book entries, and to determine
which among the articles needs renewal. This
is an important duty: seeing that, as everything
is supplied by contract, it is essential
that arrangements be made in time, to replenish
the store before it sinks too low. We occasionally
see, in the railway newspapers advertisements
from the companies, inviting tenders for
the supply of all sorts of things; and these
supplies are to be sent in at such times as may
suit the convenience of the buyers. Everything
is tabulated and booked; every ball of twine
and pint of oil has its history recorded, so far as
concerns its coming in and going out. The
master carriage-mender knows, or ought to
know, exactly the amount of his stock of wood,
metal, cloth, trimmings, paint, oil, varnish, and
other materials; the master locomotive-repairer
knows the state of his supply of all things
necessary to keep his men going; and each is
empowered to draw on the storekeeper for what
he wants. The documents kept on both sides
are the evidence on which the faithfulness of
the various superintendents of departments
rests; and, as a necessary precaution, nothing
passes in or out of any department without
scrupulous book-keeping. Of course this is no
more in principle than is observed in any well-
managed commercial establishment; but the
notable circumstances in relation to the great
railway companies are, that the transactions
exceed in magnitude those of any private firm
whatever, and that in a joint-stock company
it is difficult to obtain the same energetic
devotion to the affairs as is felt by the partners in a
firm. Queer things used to take place in the
earlier history of the railway system; but the
companies are now well served by their officers,
especially where the directors adopt the wise
policy of paying sufficiently high salaries to
attract good men and true to their staff. It is
not necessarily all sorts of people that would do
justice to all sorts of things.

GOING INTO HOUSEKEEPING.

GOING into housekeeping is one of the events
in a man's life to be numbered with the first
pair of breeches, with casting off jackets (the
shell of boyhood) to assume the tails of virility;
with being married; with the becoming a father.
It is an era in one's existence, a grand
transformation scene, a great sensation!

I had been long a lodger, and was accustomed
to all sorts of lodgings. Naturally I did
not like lodgings. I hold that you cannot be
comfortable in lodgings unless you can afford
to pay rent enough to put your landlady
under your feet—unless you are the first floor,
and can trample upon everybody else in the
house. You are not comfortable even then; for
the sense that the chairs you sit on, and the
bed you lie on, and the knives and forks you
eat with, are hirelings, the indefinite property
of some other person ("party," perhaps, is the
proper word here), you scarcely know whom—
this sense, I say, is an uncomfortable one,
uncomfortable to sit under, to lie under, to eat
under, and it leads to longings—longings for
your own feather-bed (for the hireling is so
chary of feathers); longings for your own arm-
chair, which has not been slave to thousands;
for your own silver spoon, which is silver, and
has not ministered to strange mouths, and
scraped out pots—longings, above all, for a roof
and a street door to call your own.

There is nothing so annoying to a sensitive
lodger with an ambition to be a self-contained and
responsible citizen, as the knowledge that other
lodgers—whom he may dislike very much, and
whom he generally does dislike very much—are
at liberty to knock double-knocks at his outer
door, to race up and down his stairs, and to
make noises over his head. A man with a
proper ambition does not feel that he is entitled
to look upon himself as a full-blown Englishman
while he is only part proprietor of a street
door, and has no vote, not even at an election
for a parish beadle. An Englishman,
conscious of a share in Magna Charta, the Bill
of Rights, and Habeas Corpus, is not complete
until he has a castle of his own, a castle with a
portcullis that none may dare pass without
respectful challenge. Unfurnished lodgings,
with the "whole of the upper part of the house,"
or the "whole of the lower part of the house,"
is only half way to the castle after all. True,
to have your own sticks—mark, you only call
them sticks when you are in lodgings; place
them under your own roof, and they assume the
dignity of furniture—is something to be proud
of; but your pride is still liable to a fall while
the second floor and attics are entitled to
hammer impatiently at the portcullis, and swear
oaths if they be not admitted instanter. You are
not yet entitled to go forth upon the battlements