Paid ser­vices may sub­stan­tial­ly improve a cut­ter’s qual­i­ty of life, should they be afforable.

medical care

The above makes no assump­tions about physi­cians’ uti­liza­tion of ster­ile tech­nique. Some doc­tors may charge sig­nif­i­cant­ly less but have no regard for ster­ile work. Any wound or treat­ment in-hos­pi­tal car­ries a risk of acquir­ing ill­ness or infec­tion unless it is total­ly pri­vate or high­ly advanced.

room & board

Room­ing accom­mo­da­tions vary wide­ly. In the same city, one may find one-pen­ny dan­gling rooms (a shared rope to dan­gle on, above the rats) in one bor­ough and high-rise hotels—with plate glass win­dows, plant­ed pal­mettes, and glit­ter­ing restaurant-bars—in anoth­er. In the coun­try, a creaky room above the road­house bar, com­plete with straw mat­tress and out­house, can be had as often as a warm, herb-scent­ed cot­tage leased to gen­tle­man hunters. 

Food is sim­i­lar­ly var­ied, and the prices here are approx­i­ma­tions based on real, com­mon val­ue. One can pay strik­ing­ly lit­tle for a tremen­dous­ly stout meal on the street (six Ched­dar-fried eggs in a news­pa­per nest) or far too much for a chic entree at a bistrot (a cucum­ber sal­ad with Lichys­soise sauce) with mer­it more artis­tic than caloric.

stable

transportation

Horse and car­riage trans­port has large­ly declined out­side cities. How­ev­er, stages may still be hired where trains are absent or slow, and post-chais­es remain a high-speed method of con­veyance between cities. 

Sad­dle hors­es are often avail­able for hire, espe­cial­ly in urban areas, but even these are grow­ing unpop­u­lar, as few­er and few­er folk are will­ing to—or know how—to ride.

Many liv­ery sta­bles still offer car­riages, typ­i­cal­ly small, for hire. The hors­es asso­ci­at­ed with these are ordi­nar­i­ly well-man­nered and require very lit­tle skill to pilot.  

Train oper­a­tions on the Coast are increas­ing­ly advanced. The aver­age pas­sen­ger train attains 25 miles her hour at aver­age (account­ing for stops.) A fast train (or “high­ball” route) may reach 50 mph.

Com­pared to their fore­fa­thers of just 20 years ago, trains run vast dis­tances with­out stop­ping: up to 100 miles. High PSI engines enable enhanced sig­nal­ing and brak­ing. Auto­mat­ic lubri­ca­tors remove the need to stop for oil­ing. Gang­ways between train cars allow pas­sen­gers to move from car to car, cre­at­ing the din­ing car and the sleep­er car and remov­ing any need to dis­em­bark dur­ing fuel and water stops.

The prices avail­able for train tick­ets are aver­ages. Fin­er or poor­er class­es of ser­vice may dif­fer sub­stan­tial­ly. 

Cabs, be they horse-drawn or—increasingly—motoric, are abun­dant in urban areas. Gov­erned either by strict bound­aries (“any­where in the city cen­ter for fourpence-half”) or by the mechan­i­cal taxime­ter, cab­bies charge by dis­tance. Your fare begins count­ing from the hack­stand and is resolved at your point of dis­em­barka­tion.

For the pur­pose of deter­min­ing fares, use a per-zone basis and charge incre­men­tal­ly per 500-meter zone entered.

Street­cars use a dif­fer­ent fare basis entire­ly: You are mere­ly charged to embark the car and may get off wher­ev­er you please. Street­cars tra­verse pre­fixed routes and vis­it their stops on a reg­u­lar sched­ule, usu­al­ly every 5 min­utes (for reg­u­lar routes) or every 20 (for slow routes.) Omnibuses—very large urban stage coaches—operate in the same fash­ion. 

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