Note 16 — LETTER XIII.

We must admit that our experience differs greatly from that of many; and, looking at the statistics of railway travelling, accidents do occur with frightful frequency. In a report recently published by the Philadelphia and Reading Railway, the accidents which occurred on that line alone in 1855, amounted to no less than 179 in a year, and this on a line where there is no great press of traffic. In these accidents, 619 cars were broken, 29 people killed, and 7 wounded. Things are since a little improved; as, last year, 1858, there were only 26 cases of killed and wounded, and, the Report adds, as if consolatory to the feelings of the natives, "of these 18 were strangers."