England, he begins to doubt the soundness of Protection.

Things are made badly and priced exorbitantly in America, because the manufacturer has the consumer in a corner. He must either buy his goods, go without, or import them from Europe, paying the heavy fine imposed at the Custom House. It is a bitter reflection on American manufactures, and a striking commentary on the working of a system of arbitrary restriction of competition, that whenever an American gets the chance, he adopts the last course. A fellow-passenger on the Britannic brought with him for a relative, a well-known senator and stout champion of Protection, six pairs of boots, for which he had paid the fancy price of £2 10s. a pair. To this was added a Customs impost of onethird; and yet the senator found it worth while to buy his boots in London, and, comfortably and stoutly shod, will in the coming Presidential campaign angrily denounce Free Traders and eloquently plead for the Protection American manufactures.

Another passenger had made a pilgrimage to Coventry, ordered a bicycle, paid freight and Customs duty, and found the bargain better than anything he could do in the United States. The keeper of a gambling

house at Leadville, the same who boasted of his tiles imported from Minton's, told me he had a pair of riding-breeches made in England. These lasted him five years. Giving out fourteen months ago, he bought another pair of American manufacture, which were already worn out, and he was wondering how he could get a fresh supply from England. Advocates of Protection admit all this, but see in it only a fresh argument against Free Trade.

"If we abolish protection," they say, our manufactories must shut up. They cannot compete with England. Our manufacturers would all go bankrupt, and we should be driven to rely entirely upon agriculture."

There are some Americans who take another view, and believe that if Free Trade were adopted, the cost of living would decrease, the demand for wages would have a corresponding fall, and the American manufacturer, no longer pampered, and having cheap labour at his command, would go in for making the best and cheapest article, and would succeed. But this class is in the minority, and the era of Free Trade in the United States is still afar off.

CHAPTER XI.

ON THE RAILWAY CARS.

AN inconvenience inseparable from the distances run on American railways is the variation of time. Going West one's watch is always slowing; going East it gains—a difficulty that might be grappled with if it stood alone. But there is superadded the uncertainty as to what time prevails in the connecting-link of railway with which you are specially concerned. There was much disgust expressed in the British section of a Denver train at the discovery made, on reference to the time-table, that the Denver and Rio Grande Railway delivered its passengers at Ogden a quarter of an hour after the Central Pacific train had

gone on to San Francisco. On arriving at Ogden it was found that, on the contrary, there was a good hour to spare for breakfast, the simple explanation being that at Ogden San Francisco time is taken up, whereas we had been running on Denver time.

I used to have a great pity for the people living at Pontarlier, the frontier town, where French time is exchanged for the Swiss. Between l'heure de Paris and l'heure de Berne, set forth on the same clock-face by combination of red and black hands, it seemed that life could scarcely be worth living. But Pontarlier is not a patch on Ogden, where the waiting-room at the railway station is crowded with clocks, giving the various times upon which divers trains will run. It would not be difficult to drive a man mad, supposing he were called up in the morning by New York time, had his breakfast by Washington time, lunched at San Francisco time, had a cup of five-o'clock tea by the Boston clock, dined at the Chicago hour, and went to bed at Laramie time. He would gratefully be buried either at St. Louis time or Omaha, whichever struck first. At Ogden, trains running west are ruled by San Francisco time, which is 3h. 2m. slower than Washington time; 3h. 26m. than Boston; 3h. 14m. than New York; 2h. 20m. than Chicago; 2h. 9m. than St. Louis; 1h. 46m. than Omaha; 1h. 14m. than Laramie; and 42m. slower than Ogden time.

The public inconvenience arising from this penalty of geographical greatness has long occupied the attention of the railway mana

gers. It is growing in pressure since the railway system is branching out and every little line has its local time. A characteristically bold scheme has been put forward to abolish the Old-World clock dial, and have one worthy of the United States. Why should the computation of time stop at twelve o'clock, when there are twenty-four hours in the day? Why not have thirteen o'clock and even twenty-four o'clock? These startling questions have been put before the intelligent public, and have been received with much favour. If the French Republicans changed the names of the months and the course of years, why should not a greater and more stable Republic have its own clock-dial? The proposal was tempting, but it had to be resisted by reason of the same extension of longitude that is at the bottom of the whole difficulty. When it is twenty-four o'clock (Anglicé midnight) at Boston it would be about half-past eight in the evening in San Francisco. Must San Francisco be put to bed immediately after dinner, or must Boston sit up till what would be half-past three in the morning?

Whatever the Republic might decree, the sun would remain master of the situation; and the national sun-dial scheme, gravely put