The best of times, the worst of times

In an article written for Household Words, a magazine that he edited in the 1850s, Charles Dickens describes a trip by express train and Channel ferry from London to Paris. The title, `A Flight??, gives an indication of his feelings ?? houses, stations, fields flashing by. After paying his fare at London Bridge he had been, he wrote, ??discharged ??of all responsibility apart from the preservation of a voucher, ruled into three divisions??.