The conductor now applied for their tickets; and Clifford, who
had made himself the purse-bearer, put a bank-note into his hand,
as he had observed others do.
"For the lady and yourself?" asked the conductor. "And how far?"
"As far as that will carry us," said Clifford. "It is no great
matter. We are riding for pleasure merely."
"You choose a strange day for it, sir!" remarked a gimlet-eyed
old gentleman on the other side of the car, looking at Clifford
and his companion, as if curious to make them out. "The best
chance of pleasure, in an easterly rain, I take it, is in a man's
own house, with a nice little fire in the chimney."
"I cannot precisely agree with you," said Clifford, courteously
bowing to the old gentleman, and at once taking up the clew of
conversation which the latter had proffered. "It had just occurred
to me, on the contrary, that this admirable invention of the railroad
--with the vast and inevitable improvements to be looked for, both as
to speed and convenience--is destined to do away with those stale
ideas of home and fireside, and substitute something better."
"In the name of common-sense," asked the old gentleman rather
testily, "what can be better for a man than his own parlor and
chimney-corner?"
"These things have not the merit which many good people attribute
to them," replied Clifford. "They may be said, in few and pithy
words, to have ill served a poor purpose.
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