—to grant him an extra room, and left him with
a very distinct and indigestive remembrance
of a lunch of "spice-cake" which was like
Derbyshire spar, and of the bare and comfortless
aspect of the shabby little place. Since
then I have, for my sins, visited refreshment
stations of far greater pretensions than poor
Robert's; but, with scarcely an exception, they
have been as wretchedly meagre as his; and
whenever it has been possible to peer below the
surface, I have found the task of catering for railway
stations, and for their supply of provisions
and wine, to be conducted on similarly profitless
principles. Sometimes the privilege is used as
a director's or shareholder's job; sometimes it
is given as a bonus to people otherwise
employed; sometimes a brewer's nominee is first
tied hand and foot and then put in to sell
goods, by which he can only make a profit by
weakening or adulterating: the one thing
uniform is the shameful treatment of the public,
and the natural indignation it has caused.

It was upon this field that the genii came,
and saw, and conquered. At present the entire
commissariat of more than one line of railway
is entrusted to them; and they are also the
chosen refreshment contractors of large public
establishments, such as the Royal Italian Opera,
the Horticultural Gardens, and the City Corn
Exchange. Their refreshment-bar at the Paris
Exhibition was the most frequented of all; their
damsels the most popular; and their table
d'hôtel one of the sights of that noisy, feverish
place.

It is near Ludgate-hill, and in a small counting-
house filled with books and papers, that I
present my credentials and become acquainted
with the genii, who are courteous men of business,
with nothing to distinguish them from other
successful mercantile or professional folk.
Anything less like the conventional type of refreshment
contractor than the quiet, well-mannered
people before us, it would be hard to find; and
we promptly decide that they are genii, who
have assumed the shape of human philanthropists
the better to carry out their beneficent
aims. We have passed through a large outer
office, like a bank, at which well-dressed clerks
are busy upon ledgers and "returns;" and
are seated in a smaller sanctum, a sort of
"manager's parlour," and learn with wonder
what railway refreshment contracting really is.
"Capital, enterprise, experience," form, the genii
assure us, the magic at the root of their success.
This success they consider established; and
are willing, nay anxious, to extend their operations.
The genii are remarkable mortals, and
their career and success at the antipodes sound
like a chapter out of the Arabian Nights. Such
trifles as huge Melbourne cafés, with stained
glass domes, polished oak and rosewood floors
and palatial fittings, and with billiard and news
rooms of the latest type of luxury, seem to have
sprung up at their command, and to have
speedily recouped their enormous outlay. A
refreshment-vestibule of immense area is opened
in connexion with the Melbourne Theatre,
and speedily becomes a popular dining-place,
independently of its play-going customers. The
genii are appointed refreshment contractors to
the government railways of the colony of
Victoria, and there inaugurate the system we are
examining now. They become the caterers for
the great Werribee encampment of the volunteers
of Victoria, and provide satisfactorily for
the eating and drinking of twenty thousand
people, building a restaurant four hundred
feet long, and in which one thousand people
could and did dine simultaneously. They
despatch one of their familiars to England
with a draft for three thousand pounds, as
a preliminary sop; and eleven of the All-
England Cricketers are spirited to Australia on
handsome terms, the genii clearing a large sum
by the admission-charge for seeing those heroes
play. Burning like two Alexanders for fresh
worlds to conquer, the genii landed in England
early in 1863. One of the twain had previously
visited here, and contrasting the refreshment
system in vogue on our railways with that under
his own management in Victoria, at once
decided to seize upon the vacant ground. His
partner saw with him the vast opportunity for
usefulness and advantage which existed in
neglected England, and, after some preliminaries,
they became refreshment contractors on a
metropolitan line. Success was immediate, and
has continued to increase from that time until
now.

The genii are as warm advocates of
"payment by results" as Mr. Lowe himself, and
stipulate, before entering upon a contract, that
the railway company shall, in every instance,
provide the refreshment stations with good
cellarage, adequate cooking facilities, and
comfortable sleeping apartments. They pay,
instead of rent, a per-centage upon their returns,
so that the interests of contractors and
company are identical. Every station is worked
on a uniform plan, and the one we are visiting
is the chief office and the heart and brain
of the entire system. This system is one of
intense centralisation. The eating and drinking
at Birmingham or Dover is as closely
supervised by the genii and their officers at
headquarters as if they sat in a back parlour at each
place, and were constantly watching their local
customers from behind the blind.

The operations are gigantic, and the elaborate
method of book-keeping makes waste and
fraud impossible. If any of the pretty girls in
this employment—and there are in summer
two hundred and fifty of these— allow compliments
from idlers, or undue attention to their
own personal appearance, to interfere with
their usefulness, the fact is known at headquarters
before a fortnight has passed. Not by
employing spies, nor any other derogatory
course, but by a system of check which is so
exquisitely minute that wastefulness in drawing
beer, or indifference to customers, is proved by
the inexorable logic of figures. The genii have
twenty-one refreshment stations in full work,
eighteen of which are on railways, and give