Originally Posted by gmw
Most of us come from Dullborough who come from a country town. As I left Dullborough in the days when there were no railroads in the land, I left it in a stage-coach. Through all the years that have since passed, have I ever lost the smell of the damp straw in which I was packed - like game - and forwarded, carriage paid, to the Cross Keys, Wood-street, Cheapside, London? There was no other passenger, and I consumed by sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and it rained hard all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I had expected to find it.
-- Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller (1859).
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