That scarce may sing in all this glad increase

    Of merriment! So, pray thee, do not cease

    To cheer me thus, for underneath the quip

    Of thy droll sorcery the wrangling fret

    Of all distress is still. No syllable

    Of sorrow vexeth me, no tear drops wet

    My teeming lids, save those that leap to tell

    Thee thou'st a guest that overweepeth yet

    Only because thou jokest overwell.

   What this country needs, aside from a new Indian policy and a style of poison for children which will be liable to kill rats if they eat it by accident, is a Railway Guide which will be just as good two years ago as it was next spring—a Railway Guide, if you please, which shall not be cursed by a plethora of facts, or poisoned with information—a Railway Guide that shall be rich with doubts and lighted up with miserable apprehensions. In other Railway Guides, pleasing fancy, poesy and literary beauty, have been throttled at the very threshold of success, by a wild incontinence of facts, figures, asterisks and references to meal stations. For this reason a guide has been built at our own shops and on a new plan. It is the literary

    piece de resistance

   of the age in which we live. It will not permit information to creep in and mar the reader's enjoyment of the scenery. It contains no railroad map which is grossly inaccurate. It has no time-table in it which has outlived its uselessness. It

   does not prohibit passengers from riding on the platform while the cars are in motion. It permits every one to do just as he pleases and rather encourages him in taking that course.

   The authors of this book have suffered intensely from the inordinate use of other guides, having been compelled several times to rise at 3 o'clock a. m., in order to catch a car which did not go and which would not have stopped at the station if it had gone.

   They have decided, 

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