UC-NRLF 
 
 
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 COUNTRY SERIES. 
 
 It will be the aim of the publishers to make the TOWN 
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 serious works, selected from the choicest home and foreign 
 contemporary literature ; books acceptable at all seasons, in 
 both Town and Country. 
 
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 BEN MILNER S WOOING. By HOLME LEE. 
 SYRIAN SUNSHINE. By THOMAS G. APPLETON. 
 
 A WINTER STORY. By the author of " The Rose 
 Garden." 
 
 FROM TRADITIONAL TO RATIONAL 
 
 FAITH ; OR, THE WAY I CAME FROM BAPTIST TO LIB 
 ERAL CHRISTIANITY. By R. ANDREW GRIFFIN. 
 
 G. T. T. ; OR, THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF A 
 PULLMAN. By Rev. E. E. HALE. 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 
 
 BOSTON. 
 SPRING OF 1877. 
 
TOWN AND COUNTRY SERIES." 
 
 BEN MILNER S WOOING. 
 
 BY HOLME LEE. 
 
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 " Ben Milner s Wooing, is the first of the new series. It is a pure, wholesome, 
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 such in Ben Milner s Wooing. We must commend the beauty of the volume, its 
 neatness and handy shape." Boston Traveller. 
 
 "There is not an exciting chapter in it, and yet there is not an uninteresting chap 
 ter. The title tells the whole story. The characters are without exception capitally 
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TOWN AND COUNTRY SERIES. 
 
 G. T. T.; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF A 
 PULLMAN. 
 
IT IS A VERY GOOD OFFICE ONE MAN DOES ANOTHER, WHEN HE TELLS 
 HIM THE MANNER OF HIS BEING PLEASED." 
 
 Sir Richard Steele. 
 
G. T. T.; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF 
 A PULLMAN. 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD E. HALE. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1877. 
 
Copyright, 1877, 
 BY ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
955 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 MORE than a generation ago, a common joke 
 one of the commonest represented that when 
 an insolvent debtor, or a rough who had been 
 engaged in an "unpleasantness," or any other 
 loafer who had changed his home, wished to leave 
 warning behind him where he had gone, he 
 chalked upon his door the letters 
 
 G. T. T. 
 
 These letters were in no sort mysterious. They 
 meant and were understood to mean, " Gone to 
 Texas." 
 
 Old enough to remember their use, when they 
 were quite as intelligible as A.S.S. or LL.D., 
 I have been amused and surprised to see that 
 this generation does not know what they mean, 
 and that a word of preface is needed to explain. 
 I was so simple, and so far gone in years, that 
 when I announced the title to this book I sup 
 posed all America would know, all America 
 would have known thirty years ago, what these 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 letters mean. I had no thought of a secret society 
 or of other cabala. 
 
 For myself I had an early interest in Texas. 
 The first pamphlet I ever published and that, 
 I see, was a generation ago was an appeal to 
 New England men and women to emigrate to 
 Texas. It was printed in the month of March, 
 1845. I had heard at Washington, that winter, 
 most of the great debates in which the annexa 
 tion of Texas, and so much more of the later 
 history of the country, were decided on. I re 
 turned to Massachusetts, convinced that the 
 simplest solution of the southern question was 
 in a vigorous and large emigration of northern 
 men into that New Empire, to whose fortunes 
 ours had been linked by the resolutions of annex 
 ation. And so I wrote and published the little 
 pamphlet of which I speak, under the title " How 
 to conquer Texas before Texas conquers us." It 
 was an eager appeal for emigration. At that 
 time I should have been glad to join any colony 
 which would have tried that adventure. 
 
 But, so far as I learned, no other New Eng- 
 lander wanted to go. The great part of the only 
 edition of my modest pamphlet remains unsold 
 on my hands. The law, not then well under 
 stood, was yet true, that freemen would not 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 emigrate into a slave State, unless they had 
 slaves to take with them. It was as true as was 
 the other law that slave-holders would not emi 
 grate into neutral territory. The emigration 
 into Texas, never very rapid before the war, 
 went on with all the difficulties which check 
 emigration into regions which permit the insti 
 tution of slavery. 
 
 The truth of the principle, that organized 
 emigration is the best method, if indeed it is not 
 the only method, by which an old community 
 can direct the policy of a new State, was left to 
 be verified in 1854 and 1855, by the organization 
 of the Emigrant Aid Company, and the coloni 
 zation of Kansas under the admirable lead of 
 Mr. Eli Thayer. The great issue was then first 
 made on a fair field, and the great battle was 
 then first won. As an officer of that company, 
 I had some correspondence with the German 
 free-state men in Texas. 
 
 Having taken this sort of personal interest in 
 Texas long ago, I had always hoped to see for 
 myself the beauties of a region which all people 
 unite in praising. By a queer accident, such as 
 will happen even to writers who are "not too 
 bold," it turned out, unexpectedly to me, that a 
 hero of mine, named Philip Nolan, had a god- 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 father of the same name, who really opened up 
 Texas to American discovery and adventure in 
 the year 1801. I gladly embraced a favorable 
 opportunity to go in person, over the routes of 
 his adventure there ; and in this little story I have 
 detailed some of the modest adventures of travel 
 lers in Texas in these later times. Let me hope 
 that the little book may tempt some invalid to 
 whom is recommended a milder winter than ours 
 in Norumbega, to go to dear San Antonio, rather 
 than to try the rough sea waves, exile from 
 country, and the grausome horrors of a foreign 
 language in Mentone or at Nice. Nor let any 
 such unknown friend be deterred by the dangers 
 which threatened Effie and Hester on the prai 
 ries. The railroad to San Antonio has been 
 finished since they were there ; and " beauty in 
 distress," may now go from Halifax to " San 
 Antone " without sullying a white satin slipper, 
 if she pleases. Beauty in distress may recline 
 on the sofas of a palace car all the way, nor leave 
 one palace for another, but under the shelter of a 
 station. 
 
 True, to do this, beauty in distress must not 
 pass through Boston. There beauty would have 
 to be transferred by cab or coach from station 
 to station. If we found that necessary at Hearne 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 or Hempstead, as it is not, we should say, " So 
 much for barbarous Texas." 
 
 The emigration, which could not be hurried in 
 1845, is now pouring into Texas in an unexampled 
 stream. The population doubles every five years. 
 Why not ? The climate is peerless. The soil 
 seems inexhaustible ; the policy of the State is 
 such, that you have your farm for the asking. 
 And slavery the obstacle that stood in the way 
 thirty years ago is at an end for ever. 
 
 " Ten years hence, we will tell you who your 
 President will be. You will not have to trouble 
 yourselves then." This is the joking remark of 
 intelligent Texan gentlemen now to northern 
 travellers. 
 
 Why not ? The population of Texas is now, 
 at least, 1,600,000. If it is 3,000,000 in 1880, 
 and 7,000,000 in 1887, will any combination of 
 politics choose a President then whom Texas 
 does not prefer ? 
 
 Since these sheets began to pass the press, I 
 have lighted on an old tract by Samuel Sewall 
 (the judge of Whittier s poem, the same who 
 hung the witches), written to prove, from the 
 irrefragable evidence of the books of Daniel and 
 the Revelation, that in Texas, or, as he calls it, 
 " the northern part of the province of Mexico," is 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 the seat predestined of the "New Jerusalem," 
 the site of the city which was to descend from 
 heaven. 
 
 Columbus expected to find it, where modern 
 research found Pitcairn s Island, at the antipodes 
 of the old Jerusalem. Quien sabe ? 
 
 There are who say that we carry heaven with 
 us, and I believe them. If so, dear reader, may 
 you and I find old Sewall s prophecy good, when 
 next we take a Pullman palace, and 
 
 G. T. T. 
 
 EDWARD E. HALE. 
 
 IN THE PALACE " PITTSFIELD," 
 Lake Shore Railroad, 
 
 Near Ashtabula Bridge, 
 June 17, ST. BOTOLPH S DAY, 1877. 
 
G. T. T.; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF 
 A PULLMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " T OWER six," said the clerk. 
 
 "^ " But I want the whole section." 
 
 " Then you can have all six ; or, if you please, 
 all of seven." 
 
 "Six is very well; how much?" said she. 
 
 This little dialogue passed at the window of 
 the Palace Car Office at the Jersey side of the 
 river, at the station of Tom Scott s railroad, 
 which begins at Jersey City and from that point 
 goes everywhere. 
 
 She was Hester Sutphen, the heroine of this 
 little story. 
 
 The clerk is not the hero. We shall never, 
 never hear of him again unless we go somewhere 
 by that route, and he says "Lower six" to us, as 
 we will hope. 
 
 For, as all travellers know, six and seven are 
 two of the best possible sections in a Pullman s 
 
WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 Palace. There is no difference between six and 
 five if the even numbers are on one side and the 
 odd on another. About other numbers you may 
 be confused, but not about five, six, seven, and 
 eight. They cannot be over the wheels, nor next 
 the stove, nor next the door. 
 
 Now, if you are to live in a Palace, what right 
 have you to ask any thing else than that you shall 
 not be over the wheels, or next the stove, or near 
 the door ? 
 
 Certainly Hester Sutphen asked nothing else. 
 She returned to her companion, Euphemia, told 
 her that all was well, and, now that they were 
 sure of that, they went to breakfast together. 
 Although this story is written by the most faith 
 ful disciple of Jacob Abbott in the art of story 
 telling, the reader will not be informed of what 
 the breakfast consisted. Other breakfasts, as 
 well as dinners and suppers, will be described in 
 their order. It is enough to say that they were 
 in that admirable station house which Mr. Tom 
 Scott, whoever he may be (I have not the slight 
 est idea), or some subordinate of his, has erected 
 on the Jersey side, to the delight of all New Eng- 
 landers who travel, and to the equal disgust of 
 the oyster dealers on the North River side of the 
 city of New York. For the New Englanders who 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 go West and South are now able to have a good 
 breakfast and to engage good sleeping berths also, 
 and -the oystermen lose the opportunity, which 
 they once had, of asking the travelling wise men 
 from the East what are the relations between the 
 true, the good, and the beautiful. 
 
 They went to breakfast (the girls not the 
 oystermen), then they took as interesting a walk 
 as they could in Jersey City which is not so 
 very entertaining a place when you do not know 
 where to go, and cross boys are just opening the 
 shops then they returned to the great wait 
 ing-room and bought a "Tribune" and looked at 
 some Sisters of Charity. 
 
 They wanted to buy a " Herald," but were afraid 
 this would not look reputable for lone ladies. 
 
 Then the great door opened, and they were per 
 mitted to go to their Palace. The Palace was 
 named the "Golconda." They were the first in 
 mates who that day entered its halls. 
 
 "Oh, my queen!" cried Hester. "You are at 
 last in the Palace which is to be your home- 
 who shall say how long ? Here, great princess, 
 is your throne," and she pointed to the eastern 
 seat of Six. "Behold in me the humblest of 
 your subjects." 
 
 "Well, dear subject," said Erne, laughing, "I 
 
8 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 don t know how to act very well. Could you 
 hang up this strap and where in the world do 
 you put your umbrella in a Palace ?" 
 
 For Effie Abgar had never been in a Palace 
 before. Hester, as you have seen, had more ex 
 perience. Hester, indeed, was the experienced 
 person of this party in American travel. For 
 Hester had once gone from New Ipswich to 
 Niagara Falls, and from Niagara Falls she had 
 gone back to New Ipswich. 
 
 On this occasion Hester was on her way to 
 San Antonio, in Texas, with the intention of 
 opening there a school, or as the habit of that 
 country calls it, an "Academy" for young ladies, 
 if she found a good opening. If she did not find 
 it, she proposed to look for another. For Hester 
 was tired of stoves and furnaces, of coal bills and 
 wood bills, of dirty hands and smoking chimneys, 
 and the thousand other annoyances which wait 
 on the latitude of forty-three on the Atlantic sea 
 board. And Hester was a born lover of flowers 
 also. She had that " sixth sense," for a sixth 
 sense it is, by which some people love flowers 
 for flowers sake ; not because they are pretty, or 
 sweet to smell, or graceful, or suggestive, or ob 
 jective, or subjective; nor because they are 
 cheap; nor because they are the "fugitive poetry 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 of nature" nor for any other reason which can 
 be assigned but because they are flowers. And 
 so it had happened that when in the autumn of 
 the last year, after the armistice of a summer 
 vacation, the battle of life began again for Hester 
 Sutphen and she went loyally to her guns, she 
 had said to herself and in her journal she had 
 written reverently and carefully: 
 
 "As the Lord liveth if mamma is well next 
 spring, and George and Hattie, and the children 
 if all seems to be doing well here, I will Go TO 
 TEXAS to prospect in the spring, and I will not 
 spend the next winter here." 
 
 All this she had written with- extra care in her 
 diary and it was all she did write that night. 
 "Prospect" was her little joke. The next night 
 she wrote, in a less formal hand, " Wrote to Effie 
 to coax her to G. T. T. with me. If she will go 
 it will be perfect." 
 
 And Effie had determined to go. She had no 
 idea of staying there ; but she was glad of the 
 chance of the journey. Effie had been hard at 
 work in her studio all the winter, drawing and 
 painting that was a joy and delight to her 
 and trying to teach other people to draw and 
 paint that was not so satisfactory. Effie was 
 delighted at the prospect of beginning out-door 
 
10 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 work near two months earlier than would be pos 
 sible in Boston latitudes. She arranged with the 
 other teachers and with Philip packed her 
 charcoals and her tubes of colors met Hester 
 when the hour came, at the Providence station in 
 Boston and thus they came to be at Jersey 
 City, as you have been told. 
 
 It is always interesting to be the first occupant 
 of an empty Palace. I suppose Queen Victoria 
 and Pope Pius and Dom Pedro have learned that. 
 But many other people have learned it also, whose 
 heads have never chafed under crowns. You sit 
 in your Palace how happy if you have "six" or 
 "seven" to sit in ! and as these other people 
 come in for a moment you imagine them to be 
 subjects. While they are sitting down, they are, 
 for their instant of discomfort, your inferiors. 
 Then they rise to be your peers, as they also as 
 sume their thrones ; and they, with you, examine 
 the new subjects as they enter. Hester and Effie 
 had not a large nor a very interesting troupe of 
 fellow-travellers. There was a man with a sick 
 wife ; there were a few young men whom the ex 
 perienced Hester pronounced to be "drummers;" 
 there was an old gentleman who put himself in the 
 wrong car, and had to be transferred to the Xenia 
 as soon as the tickets were shown ; and a few old 
 
OF A PULLMAN. II 
 
 ladies, who left at Trenton or other Jersey sta 
 tions. "Rather a humdrum set," said Hester. 
 But to both the girls it was all new ; and both of 
 them were ready, from every chance, to make an 
 adventure for a novel. 
 
 I have called them "girls." Will they ever for 
 give me? But how can I call them "young 
 women" ? Did I not hold them both at the font 
 in my arms ? 
 
 They brought out their novels. Hester had 
 "The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," that 
 charming story of Black s which lends its name 
 to our little tale. If only " the mantel-piece of 
 my predecessor would fall upon my head ! " 
 Effie had no matter what. She read next to 
 nothing. Her sketch book took her off from her 
 reading. The droll old Jersey farmer asleep on 
 his throne; the picturesque newsboys at New 
 ark ; the two stone posts of the college is it a 
 college? at Brunswick ; just a hint of this and 
 a hint of that, when the time would be up, and 
 the train would dash away, and Effie had to take 
 her chances of remembering the unfinished cor 
 ners of her memory sketch. She took out her 
 Prince s Patent Protean Pen invaluable re 
 source of the traveller. The blessing of a Palace 
 on Tom Scott s roads, or Commodore Vander- 
 
12 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 bilt s, is that he who rides can not only read but 
 write. And so Effie was able to write her first 
 letter home. No ! it is not worth while to copy 
 it. Though, really, this story would be best 
 written if I copied all of those two girls letters ; 
 and I have a great mind to. I will give you just 
 a scrap of this one, but I will not promise any 
 more. 
 
 ON THE WING, March 28, 76. 
 DEAR OLD PHIL, 
 
 . . . After eating our breakfast we went out to 
 see the lions of Jersey City ; and we found it a most 
 interesting place. They have wooden awnings in 
 front of the shops. We saw a whole calf in a 
 butcher s shop, with his head and feet off, and his 
 hair on quite grisly to look at. Also we saw some 
 Balm of Gilead trees. On the whole, it is a good 
 deal like Chelsea. The country is charming as we 
 ride. I like the Jersey flats near Newark, which 
 make me think a little of the country Millet drew. 
 The browns and yellows were interesting and relieved 
 by a good deal of spring color as we came on. The 
 wheat is coming up, and we have seen a little green 
 grass, bright green in some places. The willows are 
 coming on, and I do not doubt that we should have 
 found flowers if we could have looked for them. 
 
 And so on. 
 
 The mailing of this letter gave rise to a little 
 adventure. The drummers in the car somehow 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 13 
 
 sat together, a little further front than these 
 two girls. As they sat, the high backs of their 
 seats protected them in a measure from the view 
 of people behind, and so it was that Hester could 
 not see at all and Effie only see in part the pro 
 file of a young face turned away from the window 
 and looking down on a book. Effie made Hester 
 draw close to her, that she might see this finely 
 chiselled profile and the pretty fall of the girl s 
 eyelids as she read. Then she began speculating 
 as to how they should get acquainted, how this 
 poor girl could be rescued from that crowd of 
 men who surrounded her. The gap through 
 which they saw her closed up in a moment more, 
 as one of the drummers put his hat on ; so the 
 girls could not see the pretty face any longer. 
 
 " Only it was not pretty," said Effie. " I never 
 said it was pretty ; I said it was fine." 
 
 " Fine or pretty, Effie, she must have a name 
 all the same. I shall call her Fanny, Fanny Mac 
 Pherson." 
 
 " Fanny fiddlestick ! She shall be named Price, 
 Fanny Price." 
 
 " As if we were at Mansfield Park indeed ! She 
 is not a Fanny Price at all. I will give up the 
 Fanny, if you like, but never the MacPherson. 
 Honora MacPherson. How will that do?" 
 
14 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 At this moment there was a motion among the 
 drummers. He who was nearest the passage, 
 rose, stretched his arms and yawned, and took 
 down his hat. Honora MacPherson did the same 
 and took down hers, and, to the disgust of Effie 
 and the delight of Hester, stepped out with his 
 companion, a vigorous, well-formed man with an 
 Ulster on. All that the girls had seen was the 
 rather well-cut profile, and from that they had 
 constructed their romance. As the day passed 
 the company of the drummers diminished. One 
 left the train at Easton, two at Philadelphia, and 
 one somewhere else. Honora MacPherson and 
 his companion in "eleven" remained however, 
 with occasional absences in the smoking car. 
 
 When Effie s letter was finished, as they drew 
 up at Lancaster, she walked forward to call the 
 porter to ask him to post it. The porter was not 
 in his place. She came back with it, meaning to 
 look for him at the other end, when Honora Mac 
 Pherson touched his hat and said, 
 
 " Shall I post your letter, madam ? " 
 
 " If you will be so kind," said she. 
 
 And these were the first words they ever said 
 to each other. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 / T*HE two young men were named Haydock 
 and Brinkerhoff. 
 
 Neither of them was named Honora MacPher- 
 son, nor had either of them ever known any one 
 who was named Honora MacPherson. 
 
 It was Frederic Haydock who took Effie s letter 
 and posted it. It is an open question, not yet 
 decided by casuists or writers on etiquette, 
 whether he had the right, or had not, to read the 
 address ; or whether, having the right, it would 
 be quite gentlemanly for him to read it. 
 
 For the true gentleman is distinguished by his 
 abating something from his right. 
 
 However this may be, Frederic Haydock did 
 read the address, after he had run along the 
 platform, and while he opened the box to post 
 the letter. 
 
 When he returned to his seat, his friend Hiram 
 said, " Who did your inamorata write to ? " 
 
 " She wrote to Philip Abgar, 199 i-9th Tremont 
 
1 6 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 Street, Boston. I suppose it is her husband," 
 said Haydock. 
 
 The two young men were not accidental travel 
 ling companions. They were boy friends who had 
 been parted for many years, had met by accident 
 in New York, and had gladly stretched and 
 squeezed their appointments a little that they 
 might manage to start together on this journey. 
 They had been fellow-students in Antioch Col 
 lege when they were fifteen years younger, when 
 indeed they were scarcely more than boys. The 
 college had been broken up by the war, and they 
 had not seen each other again now for fifteen 
 years. Well-nigh thirty years old, they ran against 
 each other in Broadway. Whiskers, moustaches, 
 Ulsters, look of care, change of expression, all 
 were not enough for a disguise. They were boys 
 still. They stopped as if it had all been a dream ; 
 as if there had been no Five Forks, and no 
 Crook s Mills, no Battle of the Clouds, and no 
 Beaufort ; as if both of them had left recitations 
 in physical geography yesterday, and as if they 
 had happened to miss each other at prayers this 
 morning. 
 
 " How are you, old fellow ?" 
 
 " Hiram, how are you ? " 
 
 These had been the salutations of recognition 
 after fifteen years. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. I/ 
 
 They were not both drummers, as the subtle 
 Hester had fancied them. Only Hiram Brinker- 
 hoff was a drummer. Nor would he have called 
 himself by that name, though he had too much 
 sense to resent it, were it applied good-naturedly. 
 He was a travelling agent of a large house of 
 druggists, and his district was south of the Ohio 
 and west of the Mississippi. Haydock had been, 
 since the war, the postmaster of St. AugUste in 
 Louisiana. He had come home to Manitowoc 
 this summer to visit his father and mother, and 
 he took the occasion to come East as far as New 
 York, which he had never seen. 
 
 It was of course that they should establish 
 themselves at once at the same hotel ; that they 
 should spend every hour of the next week to 
 gether, and then that they should so cut and carve 
 their plans as to start on this journey at the same 
 time. 
 
 Even after the journey had begun they were by 
 no means talked dry. How had they missed each 
 other, and how close were they to each other in 
 the army ? How near did the transport, in which 
 Hiram was, pass to the camp of Fred s regi 
 ment ! A thousand such matters as these kept 
 starting up afresh, and each one, as it started, 
 opened up a thousand more. They had of course 
 
1 8 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 to pass the time of day with their companions 
 who were only starting on shorter expeditions ; 
 but, as these gentlemen dropped off one after 
 another, the two young men found the afternoon 
 devoted itself not so much to their novels or 
 newspapers as to good steady talk, such as not 
 even a week in the city had given them a chance 
 for. - 
 
 It is not to be pretended, however, that they 
 were so much absorbed in each other, through the 
 day s ride, as to be ignorant of the presence of 
 two pleasing, pretty, and ladylike young women 
 on the other side of the Palace, although " elev 
 en "were in front of "six," as the "Golconda" 
 was then running. 
 
 Honora MacPherson, alias Frederic Haydock, 
 had caught sight of Mrs. Abgar s face before she 
 caught sight of his. And it is very certain that 
 he did not mistake her for a man when she mis 
 took him for a woman. As he sat riding back 
 ward, he had better opportunities for studying 
 the ladies manner, without obtrusiveness, than 
 had Hiram. Without thinking much of the la 
 dies, they did from time to time confide to each 
 other their observations, and, in the bungling 
 style of men, gradually created a theory which 
 accounted for the existence of the other couple, 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 19 
 
 much as Hester had done, though not, perhaps, 
 so accurately. 
 
 " Times have changed indeed," said Hiram, as 
 the tireless train at last paused so a fish-hawk 
 rests before pouncing for his food just as they 
 swept into Lancaster. " I remember this place 
 when the one horse, one track, branched off from 
 the State Road to take us to Harrisburg ; when a 
 long bench to step upon seemed to be the only 
 depot convenience. My father used to tell of a 
 woman who sold crullers, pretzels, and apples on 
 a table on the south side of the track, who was so 
 beautiful that all the passengers clustered on that 
 side to see her." 
 
 Saying this, Hiram looked out of the Palace, 
 and Frederic as well ; but there was no Her- 
 mione, daughter of that remembered Helen, 
 . there. It was as Fred turned back from looking 
 for her that Effie gave to him her letter. 
 
 Anybody who has never seen other farms than 
 Effie and Hester had seen in Massachusetts finds 
 a thousand wonderful sights in the large-scale 
 farming of Pennsylvania: barns more stately 
 than churches, and fields without fences and 
 without woods just growing green as the wheat 
 starts, or just growing white as a snow flurry 
 falls. The girls were at their window studying 
 
2O WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 Pennsylvania agriculture a great deal of the after 
 noon. The men had seen a great deal of large- 
 scale farming. They had little to see, but much 
 to talk of. An hour passed before either party 
 knew it, and the train swept into Harrisburg to 
 the surprise of all when, of a sudden, martial 
 music welcomed them : 
 
 " See ! the conquering hero comes ! " 
 
 "A little surprise I arranged for you," said 
 Brinkerhoff to Haydock. 
 
 " O my queen ! " said Hester, at the same mo 
 ment, "as you first place your royal foot upon 
 the ground, you see that your lieges are assem 
 bled to do you honor." 
 
 " Are we to get out ? " asked Effie. 
 
 " Your majesty should say are we to alight ? " 
 replied Hester. " In the first place, queens al 
 ways alight ; in the second place, the word get 
 is gradually getting itself banished from all re 
 spectable seminaries and other institutions of 
 learning. And your majesty will perhaps regard 
 yourself as under my instruction for this journey 
 for the correction of your majesty s cacology. To 
 answer your majesty s question, I think we will 
 get out, and spend our twenty-five minutes in 
 examining the institutions of the capital of Penn 
 sylvania." 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 21 
 
 So they "alighted." There was no friendly 
 porter to help, the other passengers were all gone ; 
 and, rather to their dismay, the girls found that 
 they had jumped down upon a snow-bound plat 
 form into the midst of a military band, a company 
 of soldiers, and a body of men with badges, who 
 were stepping forth and back, as sundry well- 
 meaning marshals bade them, whose own ideas 
 were a little indefinite. True, they all meant to 
 be eventually collectors of customs or postmasters, 
 as the result of that day s marshalling. But just 
 how this particular procession was to be mar 
 shalled, in order that this result might be gained, 
 no particular marshal knew. 
 
 Nor did Hester, the lady-chamberlain in the 
 midst of them, know which way she was to mar 
 shal her queen. 
 
 At that moment the band close to her struck up 
 "March, march, Eskdale and Teviotsdale." 
 
 Hester was just in advance of Effie. She was 
 mad with herself because she was confused. She 
 was confused because she was rnad. Mad and 
 confused, she welcomed Fred Haydock as an 
 angel of light when he touched his hat and 
 said, " Let me show you the way, madam ! " In 
 deed she could not be certain, afterwards, that 
 for just an instant, as he led her between two 
 
22 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 very fussy marshals and separated two platoons 
 of delegates for her, she could not be certain 
 that, just for that instant, she did not take his 
 arm. 
 
 And these were the first words he ever spoke 
 to her ! 
 
 An instant more, and all peril was over. The 
 ladies were both in the dining-room, and some 
 nice Pennsylvania girls were asking them if they 
 would dine. 
 
 It had been very easy, in the retreat of the 
 studio, to say they would eat sandwiches all the 
 way till they came to Cincinnati. But with those 
 nice white table-cloths, with spoons shining 
 brighter than silver, with celery rising sea-green 
 from the water, like Aphrodite herself, to allure 
 them, with a certain feminine craving for Thea 
 Bohea goading them on who was Hester, who 
 was Effie, that they should refuse ? 
 
 " Have we time enough ? " 
 
 "Twenty-five minutes, madam. Rather more 
 to-day because of the delegates, madam. Soup, 
 madam ? No ? Fish ? Troutfreshcodsaltcodfresh 
 mackerelsaltmackerelroastbeefboiledbeef roastmu 
 ttonboiledmuttonroastturkeyboiledturkeyboiledh 
 amplainsausageBolognasausagecoldtongue ? " 
 
 Effie was aghast. But her lady-chamberlain 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 2$ 
 
 selected for her, and in a few minutes they were 
 well engaged. The " pretty waiter girls " had 
 provided for them both, when the hospitable 
 chief of staff came to the table leading two gen 
 tlemen who did not seem to be delegates, to whom 
 he gave vacant seats at the same table. 
 
 The ladies saw on the instant that the two 
 gentlemen were the drummers of section Eleven. 
 
 Hester bowed and smiled. 
 
 Frederic explained, " My friend here was lost 
 among the delegates. I believe if I had not res 
 cued him he would have been marched to the 
 State House to vote for Pennsylvania s favorite 
 son." 
 
 Hiram tried to speak, laughed, choked rTimself 
 with a fish-bone, and retired from the table cough 
 ing and with his face red. 
 
 He did not die suddenly, however, but reap 
 peared in an instant. 
 
 Hester had not the slightest idea of entering 
 into conversation with strangers. But she asked 
 before she knew it, " Pray what is the band, 
 who are all these people ? " 
 
 Then Frederic explained that the next day 
 there was to be a convention to nominate dele 
 gates to Cincinnati ; that these were the Eastern 
 delegates attending this State convention, and 
 
24 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 that, as the badges in their hats showed, they 
 were prepared to give the Presidency to Gov. 
 Hartranft, Pennsylvania s favorite son. 
 
 " My dear," whispered Effie, " I am horribly 
 ignorant. But I never heard of him before." 
 
 " Nor I, my dear ; but we will be drawn by wild 
 horses before we will confess it." 
 
 Then Hiram and Frederic began talking very 
 pleasant and intelligible politics with each other, 
 and they talked very well, conscious that two 
 very pretty women were hearing them. The 
 pretty women listened with all their ears,, but 
 pretended not to, because they had not been 
 introduced to these gentlemen. There was a 
 little interruption when the waiter girls offered 
 
 " Plumpuddingindianpuddingricepuddingqueenspu 
 ddingpumpkinpieapplepiedamsonpiepeachpievanillaic 
 ecreamlemonicecream." 
 
 They all made their selections. But there was 
 no more talk of politics. When the desserts were 
 all secured, Hiram was telling a funny story 
 of old Harris the ferryman, who determined a 
 generation in advance that Harrisburg should be 
 the capital of Pennsylvania. 
 
 Twenty-five minutes is a long time for dinner, 
 when you think it is no time at all. 
 
 The fatal bell struck, the gentlemen led the 
 

 OF A PULLMAN. 2$ 
 
 way to the " Golconda," the ladies took their 
 hands as they stepped into the Palace, the bell 
 struck again and they were under way. 
 
 A gray, grim sunset, but yet a sunset, on the 
 other side the river, the river gray, and cold, and 
 cross, then a little island white with snow, and 
 bearded with birches, and willows, and balm of 
 Gilead trees, " Is this the Juniata yet ? " " I 
 do not know." "This must be the Juniata." 
 " No, this is the Susquehanna, still." " I do not 
 know." " No well it makes no difference." 
 But the girls doubts were solved at last, when 
 in " eleven," with an exquisite tenor, one of the 
 young men they did not know which broke 
 out with : 
 
 "Wild roved an Indian girl, 
 
 Bright Alfarata, 
 Where sweep the waters of 
 The blue Juniata. 
 
 " Swift as an antelope 
 
 Through the forest going. 
 Loose were her jetty locks 
 In wavy tresses flowing. 7 
 
 And so on, and so on, in the verses of "The Blue 
 Juniat^t," which all girls sang a generation ago, 
 but which Young America has forgotten. 
 " Blue Juniata is yellow enough just now." 
 Then he stopped for a minute, and in a half 
 
26 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 undertone in the darkness, said to his compan 
 ion, " But for once that I have sung those words 
 to this air, I have sung these a million times : 
 
 " Who is my darling girl 
 
 Chipper and cheery ? 
 Amy is my darling girl, 
 And Amy is my deary. " 
 
 " You are as much in love with her as you used 
 to be in Yellow Springs." 
 
 " As much ! A hundred times more ! " 
 
 A pity that so pretty a song as " Blue Juniata " 
 should drift out of the memories of the young 
 people of sixteen and seventeen years old. It is 
 a pretty specimen of that school of song, which 
 may be called the " American." 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 THE BLUE JUNIATA. 
 
 ^fe=l=^ 
 
 Wild roved an Indian girl, 
 
 Bright Alfarata, 
 Where sweep the waters of 
 
 The blue Juniata ; 
 Swift as an antelope, 
 
 Through the forest going, 
 Loose were her jetty locks 
 
 In wavy tresses flowing. 
 
28 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 Gay was the mountain song, 
 
 Of bright Alf arata, 
 Where sweep the waters of 
 
 The blue Juniata ; 
 Strong and true my arrows are, 
 
 In my painted quiver, 
 Swift goes my light canoe 
 
 Adown the rapid river. 
 
 Bold is my warrior true, 
 
 The love of Alfarata, 
 Proud waves his snowy plume 
 
 Along the Juniata ; 
 Soft and low he speaks to me, 
 
 And then his war cry sounding, 
 Rings his voice in thunder loud 
 
 From height to height resounding. 
 
 So sang the Indian girl, 
 
 Bright Alfarata, 
 Where sweep the waters of 
 
 The blue Juniata ; 
 Fleeting years have borne away 
 
 The voice of Alfarata, 
 Still sweeps the river on, 
 
 The blue Juniata. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 29 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 TT is a pity, but so it is. If you choose to sleep 
 in a Palace, you cannot see more than if you 
 slept in a hovel. 
 
 And so our heroine and our heroine s friend 
 climbed the Alleghanies, and slid down the Alle- 
 ghanies, as if there were no Alleghanies at all. 
 They came to Pittsburg, and they went from 
 Pittsburg as if there were no Pittsburg at all. It 
 was as if Braddock had never blundered, as if 
 France had never conquered, as if Washington 
 had never covered the retreat, as if Pitt had never 
 become Chatham. No Pittsburg for our heroine 
 and our heroine s friend ! 
 
 Only the Palace rested a little from its bump 
 ing in the station at Pittsburg, and Hettie and 
 Effie had a little quiet dream of heaven while it 
 rested ; and then, as it started again on its re 
 lentless course, they half waked, half slept, and 
 dreamed of all the wretchednesses that their lives 
 had ever known. 
 
30 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 So they were whirled relentlessly across the 
 "Pan Handle," by which domestic name that 
 funny strip of West Virginia is known which 
 shoots up like an inverted icicle between Penn 
 sylvania and Ohio. So they crossed, half con 
 scious and half unconscious, the Ohio River. 
 But the longest night will end ; and at last both 
 girls had brushed their hair, and had otherwise 
 adjusted their toilet, and found themselves look 
 ing out on the country, trying to make out in 
 what Ohio differed from Pennsylvania, but a good 
 deal puzzled in doing so by the " areas of snow," 
 as Gen. Myers put it that day. For under snow 
 all lands are much the same. 
 
 With all their pluck, also, the two girls felt 
 wretchedly, and, if either of them had been com 
 fortably alone, she would have been glad to cry. 
 This had been actually Effie s first night in a 
 Palace, and she had slept miserably. She even 
 thought she had not slept at all. Hester s former 
 experience had been not in vain. But she, also, 
 had been bumped and tossed, and knew that the 
 night had been the longest night but one she had 
 ever known. That one was her first night in a 
 Palace. What then had this night been to 
 Effie? 
 
 Still, both the girls were brave. They had de- 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 31 
 
 termined to go to Texas together in a Palace 
 were there no other way. And neither would, 
 at the first blush, confess to the other the 
 misery she had undergone. Each, instructed 
 by the other, tottered her shaky way to the 
 washroom. Each was a little refreshed by the 
 cold water. Each, before the wildly waving 
 mirror, "did her hair." And so they sat to 
 gether, as if no night of misery had intervened, 
 in " lower six," and " lower six " made believe, in 
 its silent hypocrisy, that it never was any thing 
 but a large ttte d tete sofa. As if they did not 
 know, and it did not know, and all the porters 
 and all the newspapers, that it was 
 
 " Two beds by night, a pair of seats by day." 
 Where they were, the girls could only guess by 
 their watches, and by the "Traveller s Official 
 Guide." They had been wise enough, not to be 
 penny-wise, but to "buy the best." The porter 
 was far too busy, in readjusting "seven" and 
 " nine " and " thirteen," to tell them the names 
 of stations. Indeed the girls were too much 
 interested in his deft work, which they had 
 watched with the sympathy of professional 
 housekeepers, even to ask them. Effie twitted 
 Hester that she did not know the names of the 
 " creeks " and the villages as they passed them. 
 
32 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 "What is the use of teaching so much com 
 parative geography, my dear Hettie, if you 
 cannot distinguish Coshocton from West La 
 fayette when you see it? For my part, I am 
 only an artist. I am interested in the blue un 
 der the edge of that drift. But you, you are 
 a school-mistress, and yet you cannot tell me 
 when we come to Dresden." 
 
 No. Hester avowed in the secrecy of the 
 Palace that she had never even heard of Dres 
 den, of Frazeysburg, of Canesville, or of Coshoc 
 ton. In each of these towns readers of this tale 
 will follow her travels. How gladly would she 
 have rested her weary head in one of them ! 
 
 " But wisest Fate said, No ! " 
 And they whirled on. 
 
 The girls learned afterwards from a friendly 
 old lady of more experience to hide a Boston 
 cracker under the pillow and to eat it before 
 moving in the morning. But " wit comes after 
 wards," says the Yankee proverb, and so does 
 wisdom. At Dresden Junction they were hardly 
 settled enough to know any thing but that they 
 were faint and wretched. It was an hour before 
 the screaming wild beast which dragged them 
 on was hungry again or thirsty. When they 
 stopped at Newark to feed him, Effie looked out 
 wistfully. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 33 
 
 But the platform at Newark was snow-covered, 
 and the porter was discouraging. 
 
 The girls doubted. Just then he whom they 
 had called Honora MacPherson came up in the 
 car. On a plate he bore a single mug of New 
 ark coffee. 
 
 " Will you try a cup of coffee, ladies ? " he 
 said. " It is very poor coffee, but I believe it is 
 better than nothing. You will have no other 
 chance till we come to Columbus." 
 
 "Gentleman through and through" this was 
 the one thought of both the girls. Effie rallied 
 first to speak, thanked him and took the cup. 
 The mixture was not of that exquisite warm, 
 reddish brown as delicious to artists as to epi 
 cures it was of a hard, cold gray, with large 
 black spots floating in it. But it was warm. 
 There was a slight sense of stimulant in it, 
 though the taste was vile ; yet there was reason 
 to believe that a part at least of the compound 
 had drunk in the temper of a Brazilian sun. 
 Effie despatched her half. Hettie did the same 
 by hers, and looked for the porter. He was no 
 where. But Honora MacPherson reappeared. 
 Hester had her two nickels ready. 
 
 " Is that right ? " 
 
 " Quite right," said he, and he smiled. So 
 their acquaintance was advancing. 
 3 
 
34 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 On the strength of those doubly-baked brown 
 bread crusts mingled with charred Rio, and of a 
 sandwich, a little dry, which emerged from the 
 lunch basket, these two girls went to Columbus. 
 Columbus himself, when, about half a league 
 from the little seaport of Palos, standing at the 
 door of the convent dedicated to Saint Mary : 
 
 " He asked of the Porter 
 A little Bread and Water 
 For his Child," 
 
 was not more glad to rest from his wanderings 
 than were they. But it is not for this tale to 
 describe in detail the white napkins, the brilliant 
 spoons, the brown broiled chicken, the golden 
 omelette, the rich gravy of the steak, the crisp 
 crackle of the potato, the mosaic of the waffle 
 or the ophir tone of the syrup, of the meal which 
 lay before them. The people of Ohio have a 
 proud proverb that " No man was ever hungfy in 
 Ohio." This may be true of men who reside 
 there. Of these two girls, who had been shaken 
 like obstinate medicine vials for seven hours and 
 fifty minutes since they left Steubenville, one 
 hundred and ninety-three miles behind, it was 
 not true. They were so hungry that they did 
 not know that they were hungry till the brown 
 coffee stood before them, and then, at the sug- 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 35 
 
 gestion of the warm milk and Alderney cream, 
 blushed with that blush of a brunette in Seville 
 which already a vain effort has been made to de 
 scribe. As one of them is a heroine, and an 
 other a heroine s friend, it will not be well to tell 
 what they ate and what they did not eat before 
 they bade their hospitable host farewell and 
 mounted the snowy steps of the " Golconda " 
 once more. 
 
 " I am glad she is named the Golconda and 
 I am glad it snows. I feel as if I were going 
 
 From Greenland s icy mountains 
 To India s coral strand. 1 " 
 
36 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TT was nearly three in the afternoon before they 
 came into Cincinnati. Effie thought they 
 were underground ; but this was her mistake, 
 though it was dark in the station. The South 
 ards, father and son, were there to meet them 
 with their own carriage ; and after a mysterious 
 ride all rides in a new city are mysterious 
 now up hill, and now by long level ways, but 
 never down hill by any accident they came to 
 the exuberant welcome of the Southards home. 
 Fanny herself was at the door, unknown South 
 ard boys helped with the straps and bags, and 
 the two travel-worn girls were instantly at home. 
 How like home it all was and how unlike ! 
 
 And when they were clean again, and all sat 
 together at the early dinner which Fanny had 
 ordered for them, she compelled them to open all 
 their plans ; and, in her turn, she opened hers. 
 Soon it appeared that she had arranged for this 
 and that and another excursion and enterprise, 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 37 
 
 which would require six weeks stay. On their 
 part they had modestly, prepared to go on the 
 next morning. Against this all the hospitality of 
 Ohio protested, and all the memories of New Eng 
 land ; and it ended, as such discussions always 
 end, in the girls agreeing to spend three days : 
 item, the rest of this Tuesday, the whole of 
 Wednesday, and as much of Thursday as would 
 pass before they should take the "General 
 Lytle" and go down to Louisville. 
 
 " I thought we were going all the way in a Pal 
 ace," said Effie, not very sorry to be relieved. 
 
 " My dear Miss Effie," said John Southard, " do 
 not you know that your own Mr. Everett said 
 that one of our steamers is a palace above and a 
 warehouse below ? " 
 
 Effie did not know it, but it was not the last 
 time that she found out that she was to be made 
 responsible for all the wit and all the wisdom, as 
 well as for all the folly and all the forgetfulness, 
 of all New Englanders. 
 
 " You are but a feeble folk," said John South 
 ard, " and we cannot pretend to distinguish be 
 tween you. Do not be surprised if I call you 
 Miss Marshall." 
 
 Effie did not push the conversation. But after 
 ward she asked Mrs. Southard who Miss Marshall 
 was. 
 
38 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 "My deary she was the most beautiful woman, 
 and the loveliest too, who ever was seen since 
 Helen." 
 
 So Effie found she was in high favor with John 
 Southard. 
 
 Nobody in Cincinnati remembered the time 
 when at ten o clock in the morning he had been 
 seen outside his own office or one of the Courts 
 of Ohio. But on the Wednesday of the visit he 
 sat on the front seat of his carriage at that hour, 
 twirling his whip, and waiting only thirty sec 
 onds f or his wife and the two girls, that he 
 might drive them out of town on a visit to a 
 friend of his who lived in a real palace. 
 
 " Not one of your Yankee catacombs on wheels, 
 Miss Effie," he said. And up and up still up 
 and up the stout bays pulled the carriage, with 
 the laughing group, till they came into the open 
 country, and then by pleasant roads through a 
 cheerful region they came to the palace which 
 was promised. The grounds delighted Hester 
 with such evergreens as she had never seen or 
 hoped to see. 
 
 " If only you could see this place in the end of 
 May," said Fanny Southard. 
 
 " I am very well satisfied as it is," said Hester. 
 
 " I never was in such grandeur in my life," said 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 39 
 
 Hester when the day was done. " Yet I believe 
 we were all born to such beautiful things ; and I 
 am sure I was more at ease than I am when Erne 
 has made me climb up into her attic in the top of 
 No. 99 Oswego street." For all this, I think 
 Hester s wonder at the palace was, first and last, 
 that the hall of the house was so comfortable as 
 well as so fine. It is long, long ago that the 
 entry of a New England "house ceased to be 
 comfortable. People make them smaller and 
 smaller. They let the boys leave their dirty 
 boots there. The stairs are ugly. People even 
 fail to warm the "entry." At last it has not a 
 chair, a sofa, or a picture. It is nothing but an 
 " entry," a place to come in tfy and to go out by ; 
 and you are glad to be done with it. 
 
 But here was indeed a hall, beautiful beyond 
 any room Hester had ever seen, adorned with 
 curious and precious works of art, such as she 
 could not bear to pass by, and, withal, the cordial 
 welcome of the most courteous of hosts, who had, 
 it seemed, stayed at home because his friend 
 Southard was going to bring some friends. He 
 excused his wife, whom the ladies would see 
 afterwards. His courtesies were perfect ; and in 
 the glories of the palace Effie and Hester were at 
 once at ease. Fanny Southard was all delight. 
 
40 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 She knew especially, how Effie would enjoy the 
 marvels of modern painting with which that 
 house is filled as perhaps no other house in 
 America is. How often had she said, " If only 
 Effie could go there." And now Effie was here. 
 
 When the ladies had laid off their furs and 
 .wraps their host led them into a beautiful draw 
 ing-room, which is in fact a picture-gallery. Be 
 fore they sat down, or before Effie could cross to 
 see what stood on an easel, he asked leave to 
 present two friends who had called just before. 
 These gentlemen were standing. 
 
 " Let me present Mr. Brinkerhoff and Mr. Hay- 
 dock ! " 
 
 The girls looked up and gave their hands 
 frankly, with smile and laughter. 
 
 " Why, you are old friends ? " asked their host. 
 
 " We have travelled several hundred miles 
 together." 
 
 Then there was a little explanation ; and in 
 groups, or in couples, as accident, fancy, or cour 
 tesy suggested, they turned to what, for many, 
 many days, must be the dominant temptation to 
 any one visiting in that beautiful house the 
 study of its beautiful pictures. 
 
 "You are an artist," said Hiram Brinkerhoff to 
 Mrs. Abgar, as she stood silently before a picture 
 of Rousseau s. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 " When I see what these men have done, I do 
 not dare to say so. But there are artists of all 
 grades. Yes, I am an artist." 
 
 " And you believe in these Frenchmen ? " 
 
 Effie roused herself to a great struggle. Here 
 was one more man who supposed that the French 
 school of to-day is a horde of Bohemians eager to 
 paint naked women ; and she must pretend to 
 talk with this man about things of which he knew 
 nothing. Ah ! well. The truth is the truth, and 
 Effie steeled herself to misery even in these ex 
 quisite surroundings. 
 
 " I believe in such work as this. I believe in 
 such a picture as that" and she pointed to a 
 country scene by Millet, while for very sympathy 
 her eyes were brimming over. " I believe in such 
 landscape as that of Dupre s. I should think any 
 body might believe in a picture like that gleaner," 
 and she pointed to one of Jules Breton s paintings. 
 Then, as she looked almost indignant into his 
 face, she saw how entirely she had his sympathy 
 that she need not have strained herself up to 
 conflict and she fairly apologized for her zeal. 
 
 " I think I know your feeling," said he. " My 
 question was absurd. People talk now of French 
 artists exactly as the English talk of American 
 dialect, as if I spoke Texan, or could ; or as if a 
 Carolinian could speak Yankee." 
 
42 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 " Do not let us remember them," said Effie, 
 hastily ; " only let us enjoy while we can. They 
 will want to take us out of this room before I am 
 in the least ready to go." 
 
 Ah, me ! That is the difficulty in this palace, 
 even with all the courtesy of its host. It is not a 
 place for one day s visit, and, whichever room you 
 are in, you cannot bear to go from it to the 
 next. 
 
 " Talk of palaces," said Mr. Brinkerhoff to Effie, 
 when he found she had never been in Europe, 
 " they drag you to many and many a palace there, 
 bigger than this, and with acres of pictures on 
 the walls. But if you will trust my little experi 
 ence, you will say that there are very few houses 
 in this world, call them what you please, where is 
 so much that you are glad to see, while you are 
 not fretted with annoyances where there is 
 really nothing to be explained away." 
 
 Their host had at this moment taken Hester 
 into another room, and they could speak aloud 
 of him. 
 
 "You see," said Brinkerhoff, "that he has 
 bought what he liked, and he has not bought 
 what he did not like. I should be amused to see 
 one of the professed picture dealers of Paris, or of 
 Munich, or of Antwerp, try to sell him a picture 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 43 
 
 that he did not choose to buy. It is not a gallery 
 made to please other people, I should say, but to 
 please him who bought it." 
 
 But Effie was not listening. In a minute she 
 roused enough to know that he had been talking. 
 
 " I beg your pardon. But stand where I stand, 
 and look." 
 
 It was Couture s picture of a boy blowing bub 
 bles, when, perhaps who shall say? he should 
 have been learning his lesson. Should he ? Then 
 we should have had no picture. He is not a 
 thoughtless, lazy boy. He has a delicate, pensive 
 face more a girl s than a boy s ; he wears a dark 
 dress and leans his head back on his chair as he 
 watches the bubble. His slate is lying on his 
 knees, and beyond is a table with school-books. 
 " Tell me that that picture will not be precious as 
 long as there are boys and bubbles, mothers and 
 sisters and slates and pencils ! Who cares for 
 schools of artists, and all the stuff they write in 
 the papers about motives and tones and earnest 
 ness and fiddlesticks when there are pictures 
 like that and that and that and that?" 
 And as she spoke, she turned on her feet, and 
 faced successively every side of the room. 
 
 A happy, happy morning was it. Marvel upon 
 marvel in the house. How Hester s eyes opened 
 
44 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 when they came to rest in the library. The first 
 folio Shakespeare, had she not seen that ? The 
 earliest Milton was she curious about early 
 
 books or would she not like and so on, 
 
 and so on. Where would she ever stop, if she 
 began to look at these wonders ? And then, the 
 whole room, in the midst of what she knew were 
 almost priceless treasures, was so comfortable, 
 the fire so cheerful, and all the chances for work 
 so convenient ! 
 
 And then there must be a little lunch ; and 
 then they must go to the other library, which, 
 strange to say, w r as over the stable only the 
 stable was a palace in its way and wonders 
 never ceased till they bade their kind host 
 good -by. 
 
 They had to bid Hiram and Fred good-by also. 
 But it may well be guessed that after a day like 
 that, they could hardly believe that they had been 
 strangers only sixty hours before. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 45 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 TN the afternoon of the next day Frederic Hay- 
 -* dock was sitting, smoking, in the pilot-house 
 of the " General Lytle " as she lay at the shore 
 at Cincinnati taking on freight for Louisville. 
 The proceedings on shore were entertaining 
 many of them new to him and his position, 
 screened from the wind by the glass wall of the 
 pilot-house, was not uncomfortable. 
 
 His companion joined him, pausing a minute 
 on the step-ladder which leads to the pilot-house 
 from the roof of the Texas. 
 
 The Texas is the third story, so to speak, of a 
 river boat, the story in which the officers live. 
 Ordinary passengers have nothing to do with it 
 but to mount to its top, over which they walk to 
 the pilot-house. 
 
 To travellers to whom all is new, the pilot 
 house is on many accounts the pleasantest part 
 of the boat while they are taking observations. 
 
 " It is nothing," said Hiram Brinkerhoff, as he 
 
46 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 entered. " But I am never tired of studying the 
 movements of these river crafts and their crews." 
 
 " They are so unlike the rest of the world that 
 they have a separate column in the newspapers 
 for their bon-mots and other small talk." 
 
 " You know Mark Twain won his name here. 
 1 Mark twain ! is one of the cries of a man 
 sounding, as he reports to the pilot. If all river 
 men were as funny as he is, it would be worth 
 while to give them a column." 
 
 " It is much more entertaining now than the 
 Court Circular is, though not in quite such 
 stately English. But it always reminds me of 
 the Court Circular, seeing these people are our 
 sovereigns for the time." 
 
 " For that matter you might say that the chil 
 dren are sovereigns. I see that they have a 
 column in these newspapers, too." 
 
 " Yes. Have you studied to-day s ? " And he 
 read from that day s daily this specimen from 
 the " Children s Column : " 
 
 " DEAR SIR, My duck has seven eggs, and I hope 
 she will have four more. I read your paper every 
 day, and like it much. I am eleven years and four 
 months old and vote for Hayes. Truly yours, Abra 
 ham Lincoln Watts, South Utopia, Ohio." 
 
 " Who is Hayes ? I see he is the favorite 
 son here." 
 
OF -A PULLMAN. 47 
 
 " Yes, of that there is no doubt. He is the 
 same man that beat Allen on the hard money 
 question last year. Evidently a strong man. 
 Did not you hear what that Mr. Southard said 
 of him ? " 
 
 "At the picture gallery? Your inamorata s 
 friend ? " 
 
 " I thought," said Hiram, laughing, " that the 
 other was my inamorata. Or have you given 
 that up since she proved to be a married woman ? 
 Yes, that is the man. Evidently a man of mark 
 here, leading counsel and all that. We were 
 speaking of the Ohio State Convention, and of 
 its nomination of Hayes, and I said, rather too 
 flippantly as it proved, that favorite sons seemed 
 to be coming to the front. This gentleman re 
 plied very earnestly that the country would be 
 fortunate if it had any man of half Governor 
 Hayes s worth at its head. He has certainly 
 made a mark here. Surely you remember his 
 canvass for governor." 
 
 " My dear fellow," said Haydock, " of course I 
 do. But when you have lived in St. Auguste 
 eleven years, as I hope you may ; when you have 
 tried to keep the peace between two thousand 
 crazy and ignorant field hands and two hundred 
 crazy and irritated Acadian Frenchmen, you will 
 
48 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 find that all your interest in questions of green 
 backs, even of tariffs, even of sutlerships, is much 
 less than your interest about some of the very 
 fundamentals of government. Why, Hiram, in 
 that little parish there have been seventy mur 
 ders in ten years ! " 
 
 But here politics were cut off as the engine 
 screamed its last call to the loiterers, the bell 
 rang convulsively, the orange-women, the banana- 
 men, the candy-girls, the newsboys were tumbled 
 on shore, a " gentlemanly clerk," with his hands 
 full of papers, left last of all, and then an ener 
 getic, anxious, long-suffering mate exhorted a 
 horde of laughing, careless, limp negroes, tum 
 bling over each other s heels, to be lively and 
 not to go to sleep as they hauled up from the 
 strand that mysterious landing-plank which 
 seems like an elephant s trunk, and the boat 
 wriggled out from her berth into the current of 
 the Ohio. 
 
 And so they swept down the river. The 
 " General Lytle " got under full headway, and 
 the young men sat till the supper-bell rang, 
 watching the disappearance of the smoky city 
 and the waning light of the sunset, made perhaps 
 even more glorious by the smoke. A waiter 
 came up to summon them to tea, and Haydock 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 49 
 
 threw, away his cigar. Both of them vanished 
 into their staterooms for a minute s toilette, and 
 when they were led to their table by the steward 
 in attendance they found their chairs tipped for 
 ward, one opposite and one next to Hester 
 Sutphen ! 
 
 Mrs. Abgar sat at the end of the table next to 
 her friend. 
 
 Both gentlemen, with equal spirit, expressed 
 their satisfaction with their good luck, and had, 
 of course, no lack of subjects in going back over 
 the experiences of the " Golconda," the palace on 
 wheels, and of that other beautiful palace not on 
 wheels, which they had seen in each other s com 
 pany. Of course it soon appeared that the 
 ladies had never crossed the Alleghanies before, 
 and were wholly ignorant of the ways and 
 means, the etiquettes, luxuries, and discomforts 
 of a Western steamboat. 
 
 One of them cited the expression which she 
 had heard a day or two befoik "A palace 
 above and a warehouse below." 
 
 "Then this is our third Palace since we 
 started," said Hiram, laughing. " That is doing 
 well for Republicans in one week." 
 
 " As of course we all live at home in log cab 
 ins or in the attics of tenement houses/ said 
 
50 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 Hester, " we must be grateful for this infusion of 
 palatial experience. Do they really burn kero 
 sene in kings houses, Mr. Brinkerhorf ? " 
 
 Then the incautious school-mistress was pro 
 voked with herself that she had let Mr. Brinker* 
 hoff know that Effie Abgar had told her what 
 he had said in the picture-gallery. In fact each 
 one of the four persons marked this point 
 silently. 
 
 " As to that, I think they would be glad to. 
 To tell the whole truth, the kings and emperors 
 never asked me much to their evening parties. 
 But I am afraid they are still under the delusion 
 of wax candles." 
 
 " You remernber one Palace that was lighted 
 with petroleum ? " said Effie. 
 
 Hiram laughed, and quoted : 
 
 " Many a row 
 
 Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed 
 With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light 
 As from a sky." 
 
 " Yes, indeed ; but, somehow, I have always 
 imagined it rather smoky down there, have not 
 you ? " 
 
 " That was in Pandemonium, was it not ? 
 That was before General Rosecranz taught 
 people how to tame the naphtha." 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 51 
 
 " Was it he ? " 
 
 " I believe it was he." 
 
 " I really think," said Effie, "that Mulciber or 
 Baal, or some of them, ought to have known that 
 before General Rosecranz came." - 9 
 
 " The children of this world proved to be chil 
 dren of light that time," said Hester. " Anyway, 
 this makes a brilliant supper-room for us." 
 
 " And it will be a brilliant drawing-room, and, 
 if there is a fiddle on board, it will be a brilliant 
 ball-room by and by ; and if you are far-sighted, 
 Miss Sutphen, you can see in the distant per 
 spective that the preparations are going forward 
 at the other end for euchre, so that it will be a 
 card-room also." 
 
 " The truth is," said Frederic Haydock, " it is 
 more like a baron s hall than it is like a modern 
 palace. At the stern here the women reign su 
 preme. Yonder, indeed, in the saloon, or what 
 ever they call it, I may not enter, unless one of 
 these ladies bid me. Then comes the piano. 
 Then, where you see the captain, is the real head 
 of the tables, and the head of the feast. By 
 special privilege, because Mr. Brinkerhoff has 
 every thing of the best always, and is a favorite 
 with the gentlemanly clerk, we are permitted 
 to sit at this table with ladies. See, lower down 
 
52 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 beyond the middle distance, if you will permit 
 me, Mrs. Abgar see tables unenlightened and 
 not favored, where sit only men." 
 
 " They are below the salt, " said she, taking 
 up his figure. 
 
 " In a sense, yes. But it is the land of equal 
 ity, and they are fed quite as well as we are." 
 
 " Do you really mean," said she, " that there 
 will be dancing by and by ? " 
 
 "That depends. If those people yonder, at 
 the captain s table, are two young men who have 
 just married those two young women, and if 
 those others are the bridesmaids and grooms 
 men, we shall certainly have dancing. If, on the 
 other hand, they are delegates from the United 
 Sandemanian Conference of Louisville to the 
 United Sandemanian Conference of Cincinnati, 
 we shall have psalmody. If, perhaps, they are 
 the Grand Double Quartette of the Western 
 Reserve, or the Pittsburgian Choral Union, on 
 their way for what the newspapers call a musi 
 cal campaign, why that tall lady with black curls 
 will be archly singing, 
 
 * If a body kiss a body going through the rye, 
 before we are an hour older." 
 
 " Let us hope," said Hester, gravely, "that the 
 next song may be the Blue Juniata/ by the dis- 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 53 
 
 tinguished primo tenore assoluto from the Grand 
 Opera." 
 
 For Hester and Effie did not yet know which 
 of the two gentlemen sang so wonderfully well. 
 And so they did not know which of them was 
 so dead in love with that unknown Amy, and 
 yet they were " bound to know." But whether 
 Hiram Brinkerhoff did not understand or did 
 not care, or whether he would not understand 
 or would not care, or whether Frederic Haydock 
 were equally indifferent or equally skilful, neither 
 of them colored or looked at the other. Only 
 Hiram said, "Our chances are rather in Coro 
 nation and Peterborough, I fancy. But you 
 ladies found out, long ago, what manner of 
 people those were." 
 
 The description which Haydock had given of 
 the various purposes to which sooner or later 
 this long saloon would be devoted was no ex 
 aggeration. It looks more like a perspective 
 view of the Thames Tunnel than any picture 
 well known to most readers. After supper, at 
 the suggestion of the gentlemen, the whole 
 party walked quite forward to the other end 
 of the hall. Persons sitting there had seemed 
 dim and hazy even to Effie s far sight when 
 they stood at the piano. They found, when they 
 
54 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 came there that on the right and left, in their 
 little offices, were the clerk and captain and 
 other managers; and the persons sitting round 
 the stove there were, clearly enough, men on 
 business errands, without children or ladies, 
 who gravitated to this end as the family parties 
 gravitated to the other. They made room for 
 the ladies to pass, and then Hiram flung open a 
 door that they might look out on the night, look 
 down on the piled up stores of the " warehouse 
 below," and might see the picturesque groups of 
 the deck hands. 
 
 At other times in such scenes, Effie caught 
 every opportunity she could, by the strong lights 
 of the pine-knots at night or under the effects 
 less sharp of day, to preserve in her sketch-book 
 or on handy little bits of cigar box memorials of 
 the attitudes or occupations of these men. 
 
 The walking and talking were suddenly inter 
 rupted. Quite without notice, a strange drum 
 ming was heard behind them, and a smiling and 
 beaming negro at that moment touched Hester 
 and said, 
 
 " Please, mum, the Indians is dancing ! " 
 
 " The what ! " cried Haydock, not wholly 
 pleased with the interruption. 
 
 Then it appeared that on board the boat was a 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 55 
 
 delegation of Chippeway or Ojibwa Indians, who 
 were on a journey somewhere, after having 
 visited Washington. It had been thought fit 
 that they should follow the Father of Waters to 
 the sea, and so they were all on board the 
 " Lytle." Dr. Summerfield, a minister on board, 
 had prevailed on the agent and interpreter to 
 bring them aft in the evening to give an exhibi 
 tion of their singing and dancing in the saloon, 
 and it was their drum which had interrupted 
 Hester. 
 
 With Mr. Haydock, she followed the waiter 
 back into the cabin. 
 
 The serious red-men were leaping gravely 
 round one of their number, while yet others used 
 the drum, and she-she-gwuns, or rattles. 
 
 Dr. Summerfield explained that this was a very 
 grave and serious dance of mystery. It was in 
 fact a sort of Eleusinian mystery, and would 
 never have been performed in this assembly but 
 that Dr. Summerfield was known as a religious 
 man and the devoted friend of their race. 
 
 Hester and Fred came back just in time to 
 hear, 
 
WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 i. Na ha, Tau ne; 
 Na ha, Tau ne; 
 Ning o saw pau wabeno. 
 
 The dance proved interminably long, and the 
 verses which Effie wrote down, are only taken at 
 random from thirty or forty. 
 
 2. Hi au ha 
 Ge he he 
 He ge ge 
 Hi au he 
 Hi au ge 
 We gau bo we aun. 
 
 3. A ne kuva 
 Gi be aun 
 Ge zhick O wun. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 57 
 
 4. Ke we tau ge zhick 
 Ka te kwa 
 We teem aim. 
 
 The words printed in italics above, as the in 
 terpreter explained to her, are mere ejaculations, 
 the same in English as in Chippeway. 
 
 The other words mean simply, 
 
 1. "I am a friend of the Wabeno ; " that is, I 
 am in sympathy with this rite, and acknowledge my 
 allegiance to the Wabeno who conducts it. 
 
 2. Here the Great Spirit himself, embodied in a 
 tree, says "I (the tree) sound for my life as I 
 stand." 
 
 3. The Worshipper says : " All round the circle of 
 the sky, I hear the Spirit s voice." 
 
 4. The Great Spirit himself, as God of Thunder, 
 says : " I sound all round the sky that they can hear 
 me." 
 
 Effie asked the interpreter if he could not give 
 to her the music. But he shrugged his shoulders, 
 and, at the piano, intimated that if she would 
 slowly and gravely thrum on any two keys which 
 were not in absolute discord, with but the 
 
58 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 slightest remembrance of the time of the dance, 
 her tune would be as good as theirs. But he 
 wrote or drew for her, on the open page of her 
 ready sketch-book, the pictorial representation of 
 the words, which has been copied, with each 
 verse, above. 
 
 The first is a necromancer s hand, in a sup 
 plicating posture, holding a bone, which is a 
 charm or amulet. 
 
 The second is a symbol of the tree. 
 
 The third is the celestial hemisphere or sky, 
 with the face of the Great Spirit looking over it. 
 Within is a Manito s arm in supplication. On 
 the right is a bird of good omen. 
 
 The fourth represents the beams of the 
 Great Spirit all around the sky. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 59 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "V\ 7 HEN the girls woke in the morning each 
 * * of them had the same start of surprise ; 
 for each wondered how things could be so still, 
 and how she could have been sleeping so solidly. 
 The slight tremor of the boat was hushed, and 
 not even in her bed at home could either of 
 them have enjoyed sleep less mixed with dreams 
 than in this morning nap. In the earlier part of 
 the night things had not seemed so smooth. 
 
 They were, in truth, now at Louisville ; most 
 of the passengers had landed, and the boat on 
 their side was undisturbed by noise. When 
 they were equipped to the last button, strap and 
 keyhole, they did what Oriana or Darioleta would 
 have called " essaying the adventure " of an 
 interview with the clerk, to know how they 
 should land their luggage and how they should 
 find a cab or a coach. 
 
 They began together their walk down the long 
 saloon. But, of course as at the bottom of 
 
60 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 her heart each one had hoped, though neither 
 had yet said so before they had performed 
 one-half of the "trivial dance" before them, 
 Hiram Brinkerhoff and Frederic Haydock were 
 seen approaching from the other end to meet 
 them. If the ladies chose, they could suppose 
 that the gentlemen had deferred their own land 
 ing until they could say good-by. If they did 
 not choose they need not think so. 
 
 Anyway, the landing was featly and easily ac 
 complished. Hester began by giving her pretty 
 fur purse to Hiram that he might rightly fee the 
 porters. And when both ladies were in the car 
 riage, and he gave it back to her, he said, 
 
 " I have paid for every thing. How long are 
 you to remain here ? " 
 
 " I wish I knew. Perhaps a day perhaps 
 a fortnight." 
 
 " I hope we may call," said Frederic. 
 
 "Certainly," said Effie Abgar. "Certainly," 
 said Hester. " Good-by ! Good-by ! " And the 
 carriage rolled away. 
 
 " It was really a piece of great good luck that 
 we met them," said Effie. " They are thorough 
 gentlemen, if they are drummers." 
 
 " They are not drummers ! " cried Hester, 
 really sharply the first sharp words, however, 
 which she had spoken on the journey. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 6l 
 
 Effie would not notice the tone. She only 
 laughed and said, " Oh ! I am really relieved. 
 Not that I know what a drummer is. I only 
 took the impression from something you dropped. 
 But it is much nicer to have them fifers." 
 
 And by this time the storm was over, and 
 they both laughed and rolled round in the car 
 riage enough to kiss each other. 
 
 Louisville is a charming city, and charming 
 people live there. And to young folks- like these, 
 fleeing from snow and ice and winter, it was 
 pleasant to be greeted by spring violets and even 
 Claytonias, and to see magnolia trees and grass 
 that was fairly green. Of course they were told 
 that the spring was exceptionally late and ex 
 ceptionally cold. What spring, ever, was not ex 
 ceptionally late and exceptionally cold ? And 
 they were very glad to find a good coke fire that 
 cold morning at Mr. Sebastian s house. And 
 the welcome, when the ladies came running 
 down to meet them, was delicious. Arid this 
 time Effie could administer of the sweets of hos 
 pitality to Hester. For the Sebastians were her 
 friends ; or, rather, they had been old friends of 
 Mr. Abgar s. She had never seen them before, 
 but, as Hester said to her when they were alone 
 in their own room, it was as if they had known 
 her all their lives. 
 
62 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 So there was every sort of expedition ar 
 ranged ; every kind of pretty party school- 
 friends who turned up but had not forgotten 
 and, just as it had been at Cincinnati, the girls 
 were made to feel that they had been idiots that 
 they had not arranged to spend the whole month 
 at Louisville. But, unexpectedly, on the second 
 day only, came a letter which showed that if 
 they meant to take the best boat at Memphis, 
 and to take the chance of joining the party of 
 Governor Champernoon and his family, they must 
 not loiter long. After a very short visit, there 
 fore, ten in the evening saw them bidding good- 
 by to the Sebastians, and to quite a little circle of 
 the Sebastians friends, who seemed to Hettie 
 and to Effie to be people they had known ever 
 since they wore short frocks ; though in fact 
 they had never seen them before the " Gen. 
 Lytle" stopped at Louisville that Friday morn 
 ing. Lunches unnumbered ; little baskets of 
 Florida oranges ; curious arrangements of co 
 logne, I know not what ingenious contrivances 
 for Palace life were forced upon them as they 
 kissed good-by, and cried good-by, and shook 
 hands good-by, and told good-by, and said good- 
 by. Then the omnibus driver cried " All ready," 
 and they plunged into the darkness and drove, 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 63 
 
 through ways they had not known, to the distant 
 station. 
 
 Mr. Edgar Sebastian made all easy there. 
 "You had better take the berths at once," he 
 said. " I ordered them this morning." And 
 then to the porter, " Ready with your lantern, 
 boy ; what section has Mrs. Abgar ? " 
 
 The porter looked, and said, " The ladies have 
 number six." 
 
 " My dear," said Effie, " you, shall have lower 
 six. " 
 
 " My dear Effie," said Hester, who was in 
 advance in the darkness, and had come to the 
 Palace, "it is our dear Golconda." 
 
 " It is the Golconda," cried Effie, as she 
 mounted. And the well-pleased porter, glad 
 that everybody else was glacl, said, " Yes, ma am. 
 She had a hot box yesterday was took off to 
 cool, ma am, and the Sybaris took her place, 
 ma am. Glad you s pleased, ma am. Six is all 
 made up, ma am." And then to Mr. Sebastian, 
 " Will the ladies retire now ? " 
 
 Yes the ladies would retire. They bade 
 Mr. Edgar good-by, and did retire. They had 
 slept an hour quietly before the express came 
 thundering in from Cincinnati, and it hardly 
 waked them ; and Effie * second night in a 
 
64 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 Palace and Hester s third were such improve 
 ments on the uneasy rest of those not used to 
 wearing crowns, that they swept through Ken 
 tucky all ignorant of Kentucky, and, by the .time 
 they had found their feet and their eyes in the 
 morning, the train was running slow as they 
 crossed the Cumberland River, in Tennessee. 
 
 " I owned to ignorance of Coshocton," said 
 Hester, "but I had heard of the Cumberland 
 River." 
 
 " So had I, who am no school-ma am," said 
 Effie. She did not say that as she and Hiram 
 Brinkerhoff walked the deck on the "General 
 Lytle," he had told her more than one story 
 of his campaigning with the Army of the Cum 
 berland. Why did not she ? Because Hester 
 had points enough for jokes already, and she did 
 not choose to have Hiram Brinkerhoff called 
 "the General." Besides, who knew? "Eight" 
 and " ten " had their curtains drawn still, and so 
 had half the sections on the other side. For all 
 Euphemia Abgar knew, Mr. Brinkerhoff might 
 be behind one of those screens of worsted 
 damask next them. 
 
 So she only said " I am no school-ma am." 
 And then, when their toilet was made, they began 
 watching with eager curiosity the peculiarities of 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 65 
 
 Southern life and of a Western forest, all wholly 
 new to them. The open air aspect of every way 
 station ; the wholly new forms which loafing as 
 sumes in any strange region ; the infinite variety 
 and picturesqueness of the little darkies and of 
 the big ones ; the extravagant intricacy of the 
 rags they wore; the queerness of the mules; the 
 architecture of every thing, from a corn-barn up 
 to a plantation house ; then those strange one- 
 rail fences to which horses were tied ; and the 
 multitude of saddle horses in every village, where 
 at the North would have been wagons ; it was 
 all a curiosity. " Look here, do see this ! " this 
 was the chorus, and Erne s sketch book and 
 pencil were in busy use, while Hester was pro 
 voked at the insufficiency of railroad botanizing. 
 Would they never stop long enough for her to 
 gather a handful of specimens ! 
 
 The skilful novel-reader has foreseen that as, 
 gradually, one and another pair of the damask 
 curtains were pulled back, and one and another 
 passenger swung himself out into the passage, 
 with his coat on or without according as he were 
 short or tall, one at least, perhaps both of the 
 gentlemen who left New York in the " Golconda " 
 appeared before the ladies who were their com 
 panions to Cincinnati. In this foresight, or shall 
 
 5 
 
66 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 we say in this conjecture, the skilful reader is en 
 tirely wrong. How can this writer say whether 
 Mrs. Abgar or Miss Sutphen, as they saw the cata 
 comb of the night gradually assume the aspect of 
 a drawing-room by day, had any curious ques 
 tion whether they might recognize their travelling 
 companions ? Two German women with a little 
 child, two Jews, an old man who seemed very 
 sick, with a poor, pale wife taking care of him, 
 and one or two very insignificant men, very tall 
 and very thin, who might have been going to 
 Memphis and St. Louis to buy or sell mules, or 
 might have been agents of Brigham Young re 
 turning to report progress, but who carried l no 
 sign of what they were ; these were the most of 
 the passengers: but an indifferent looking 
 party, not encouraging to the student of romance. 
 When " Fourteen " at last gave up its dead, the 
 porter flew at the curtains and " redded " it with 
 glad promptness, and then all parties felt that 
 day had at last begun. The day was delightful. 
 They could open their windows. And, without, 
 the earlier trees and the first flowers gave token 
 of spring. 
 
 " We are more than half way to San Antonio," 
 said Hester, who had been ciphering and meas 
 uring over her Guide, "and I have not read 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 67 
 
 three chapters in the Strange Adventures of a 
 Phaeton. " She took out from her bag that 
 charming novel. 
 
 " Lucky for me," said Erne. " The minute you 
 are well in, I may occupy myself till you are 
 done." 
 
 " What a compliment ! that William Black and 
 my dearest friend should be balanced against each 
 other, and that my dearest Effie should be the 
 least bit jealous of William. I will not read one 
 word of the Phaeton till I see you deep in 
 Racine." 
 
 For Effie had bought in Louisville a little sec 
 ond-hand copy of Racine s plays, which some 
 school-girl who had " finished her education " had 
 sold at a book shop for money with which to buy 
 a quarter-pound of caramels. 
 
 " Poor dear Racine ! To think of matching him 
 against William Black. I will read you a little 
 without opening the book." 
 
 So she repeated in the genuine French tragedy 
 swing : 
 " Indeed my dear girl we shall come to the river, 
 
 I know that we go for I feel the floor quiver ! 
 
 The man by my side has come in with a broom 
 
 I must take up my shawl and must give him more 
 
 room. 
 Hettie laughed. "Very well for a beginner. 
 
68 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 But I have I not heard the classes read Berenice 
 or Athalie ? I can give it to you with the epi 
 grams. You should have an epigram at every 
 second line. No great matter what they mean. 
 How is this ? 
 
 "The boy who sells nuts and is making that noise, 
 Forgets oh, good heaven that the nuts may sell boys ! 
 Oh, my soul is the word of the angels above 
 That the angels below do not smile on his love ! " 
 
 They both laughed, as people free from a win 
 ter s work will laugh at sheer nonsense in the 
 exquisite freedom of a palace car. It shares with 
 a steamship the luxury of having no door-bell 
 and no postman. But in the steamship you are 
 sea-sick all the time if you have any brains. In 
 the palace car, unless you have been fool enough 
 to travel on the short curves of the Baltimore and 
 Ohio road, your brains are your own, and your 
 stomach s lord sits lightly on his throne. It is the 
 one place known to modern civilization where an 
 honest man can be free from bores. A dishonest 
 man earns the same privilege in the house of cor 
 rection or the State prison. 
 
 " Hush ! hush !" whispered Effie, as Hester ran 
 on with her nonsense. And indeed the whole car 
 was hushed, to listen to the weird strain with 
 which a little German woman sang her baby to 
 sleep. She had come into the Palace at Paris : 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 6 9 
 
 Uf m Berge da geht der Wind, 
 Da wiegt -die Maria ihr Kind. 
 
 Mit ihrer schlohengelweissen Hand ; 
 Sie hat dazu auch kein Wiegenband. 
 ; Ach! Joseph, lieber Joseph mein, 
 Ach ! hilf mir wiegen mein Knabelein ! 
 : Wie kann ich dir denn dein Knablein wieg n? 
 Ich kann ja kaum selber die Finger bieg n. 
 Schum, schei, schum, schei. " 
 
 m 
 
 
 
 The girls listened with pleasure everybody 
 listened with pleasure. "Go on with your old 
 
70 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 novel," said Effie, " I will go and help her put her 
 child to sleep." 
 
 And so she did ; and then she had a long talk 
 with the mother. And when she came back, an 
 hour after, and Hester was willing to look up from 
 the " Phaeton," Effie showed her this little version 
 of the song ; 
 
 " Over the hills the tempests sweep, 
 Mary rocks her boy to sleep ; 
 
 She rocks him with her snow-white hand, 
 Because she has no cradle-band. 
 1 Dear Joseph, Joseph, pray come here, 
 And help me rock my baby dear. 
 * And how can I your little baby tend ? 
 For you see I cannot my fingers bend. 
 Schum, schei, schum, schei. " 
 
 Hester hummed it, and Effie hummed it. " I 
 think * schum, schei/ is excellently translated." 
 " So do I." 
 
 "What is a cradle-band?" 
 "Just what she could not tell me." 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 " T^ATHER of Waters, indeed," said Hester, 
 as they came to the. Mississippi before 
 they expected. It was not yet four o clock, when 
 the train was due at Memphis ; but here were 
 already waters " to right of them," waters " to 
 left of them." How if the river should be in 
 front of them also ? 
 
 The truth was that the Father of Waters was 
 on a rampage. He had come to meet them. It 
 proved afterwards that he had never rampaged 
 more boldly. And here were coves where had 
 not often been coves daughters or sons of his 
 they were, according to Effie. People were go 
 ing in tubs, on planks, and in canoes, from one 
 cabin to another. Carts were standing up to the 
 hubs of the wheels in water. All things brought 
 back to Mrs. Abgar the delights of a freshet in 
 her childhood ; when, to say truth, she was cap 
 tain of the fleet and led out the adventurous 
 girls of Northampton upon the prohibited but 
 
72 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 too delightful excursions which they took upon 
 boards or cellar doors. 
 
 Memphis itself, however, was not under water. 
 Memphis is a city founded by General Jackson 
 and two friends. At one time he owned half of 
 the original town plot. President s Island still 
 preserves his memory. + 
 
 "If there are no pyramids yet, there are as 
 good inundations as on the Nile," said Hester, 
 as they adjusted themselves in a very long om 
 nibus, which was to take them to the Peabody 
 House. 
 
 "You will see a very interesting mound, 
 madam, if you are curious in antiquities," said 
 Dr. Summerfield their gray-haired friend, so 
 evidently a doctor of divinity and agent of the 
 Southern Branch Publication Board of the 
 United Presbyterian Church of the eleventh 
 secession, that there could be no impropriety in 
 his again addressing a traveller. Mrs. Abgar 
 thanked him and then, as before, he very 
 kindly helped her in her curiosity about the 
 Indians. 
 
 And at the Peabody House their hotel life 
 with its intricacies and its solaces, began. For 
 lorn enough to retire from breakfast to a ghastly 
 ladies parlor, with horribly elegant mirrors in 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 73 
 
 tarnished or burnished frames, with never a book 
 except a directory from the town or, by the 
 kindness of the Bible Society, a Bible ! But, on 
 the contrary, a certain satisfaction, be it con 
 fessed, in the chances for silence if one wished to 
 be silent ; and for naps if one wished to nap 
 unhelped and uncriticised. Of this indepen 
 dence be it observed, however, the charm was 
 gone, for both these ladies, in about six hours 
 after they had tried it. 
 
 The people in the house were as thoughtful 
 and civil as if the travellers had been princesses. 
 " See what it is," said Hester proudly, " to 
 travel without escort." The " Chester Boone " 
 might be there the next day at noon probably 
 not till night nor must the ladies be surprised 
 if she did not come in till morning of the next 
 day. This was the report of the hotel clerk to 
 them. Meanwhile would the ladies have a car 
 riage ? Or if they preferred to walk, the sunset 
 from the bluff was a fine sight, and they would 
 see the boats go off. 
 
 Hester thanked him, and when he was gone, 
 explained to Effie that this meant that they were 
 booked to stay in Memphis for eight-and-forty 
 hours at least that river boats never came as 
 early as they said they should. "So now you 
 
74 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 may get out your colors, dear you may paint 
 my portrait, or that dear old black wash-woman s, 
 or you may write a treatise on the antediluvian 
 history of Tennessee." 
 
 In fact, the ladies wholly unpacked, took pos 
 session of the drawers of their bureaux, got out 
 their books upon the tables, pinned up some of 
 Effie s sketches on the doors, and gave their 
 room a very habitable air. 
 
 They did take the sunset walk on the bluff. 
 And for the first time they understood, or began 
 to understand, what is the grandeur of the Mis 
 sissippi. The western sky was all a blaze of 
 crimson and gold. Low down insignificant in 
 every sense in comparison with those piles of 
 gorgeous color above and with the rolling ocean 
 below it was the strip of western forest, all 
 percolated with the risen flood, which makes 
 what is called the western bank of the river. 
 As if this river knew of banks or bars ! That 
 thread of woods for it did not seem like a thread 
 of land was as nothing when measured against 
 the piles of cloud above and the world of waters 
 below. The girls themselves stood high above 
 the flood, though the flood was higher, men said, 
 than it had ever been before. What a flood! 
 How angry! How sullen! How resistless! 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 75 
 
 " If a man fall in from one of the boats," said the 
 Doctor of Divinity, who had joined them, " even his 
 body is never found," Great tangles of floating 
 trees were whirling round and round. Glassy 
 patches, which seemed perfectly smooth, were 
 bordered by ripples and even strips of rough 
 waves, the glass reflecting the gold of the sunset 
 or the blue of the upper sky, and the waves 
 black and angry. 
 
 " Power and wrath and indifference ! " 
 said Effie. 
 
 " I never saw it before but at Niagara," said 
 Hester, shuddering. "Father of Waters, in 
 deed ! " 
 
 What Mr. Alger calls the element of " human 
 pathos" was not wanting in the majestic scene 
 around the girls, and below them as they stood 
 on the water-channelled bluff were thousands of 
 people coming, going, or, like themselves, rest 
 ing and looking on. How insignificant they all 
 seemed in comparison with the flood ! Was this 
 perhaps a daily promenade of Memphis ? Or 
 was this an exceptional day ? The ladies did 
 not know. There was a circus in full blast on 
 one side ; below, on one of the steamboats, was 
 a band of music. In the river on their side of 
 the river forging through all the whirl and 
 
76 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 rush and eddy were little spiteful tugs dashing 
 hither and thither, dragging great oblong barges 
 of coal. Giant steamboats beginning to cough 
 and puff and wheeze, and to give other signs of 
 life were receiving their freight and passengers. 
 Bells would ring, the band would play more vig 
 orously than ever, drays, carts, and carriages 
 would hurry, then the final words of land-lubbers, 
 and at last the Elephant lifted his great trunk 
 of a landing-plank, and the boat dashed out and 
 away to be forgotten, while the wild raging in 
 different river whirled and eddied on as if there 
 had been no boat there. The whole was a most 
 exciting and eventful scene. 
 
 The next morning, after a late breakfast, Effie 
 did take out all her paints, set her palette nicely, 
 broke to pieces a nice large cigar-box which the 
 porter had found for her, and on its largest side 
 had begun to try, " just to try," she said, some of 
 the wonderful memories of the sunset, when 
 there was a tap heard at the door. 
 
 " Come in ! " 
 
 It was the clerk of the hotel. " I am sorry to 
 tell you, ladies, that if you take the Chester 
 Boone you must leave at once. The water is so 
 high that she is much earlier than we expected. 
 They send us word that she has rounded the 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 77 
 
 point, and that means she is at the landing by 
 this time. She takes a little freight here, and 
 will be off, they tell me, in half an hour." 
 
 " In half an hour ! These trunks must be 
 packed, this palette cleaned, nay, these dresses 
 changed and these bills paid in half an hour ! " 
 
 " I have ordered a carriage, madam," said the 
 respectful clerk, "and it will be ready in ten 
 minutes." 
 
 " In ten minutes ! " screamed Hester as he left 
 the room. Effie said nothing, but her brushes 
 were already wrapped in paper, to be cleaned on 
 board the boat, and the palette was in its tin 
 case for travel ! 
 
78 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A ND Effie never once reviled Hester, nor 
 ** said, " It was you who said a river-boat is 
 always behind time." 
 
 Ten minutes saw the carriage at the door. 
 Ten minutes more saw the girls in the carriage. 
 In ten minutes more they were in the " Chester 
 Boone," had been introduced to her clerk by the 
 young man whom the hotel clerk had sent with 
 them, and this officer had said to them that they 
 would be amused by the view from the pilot 
 house. He had explained, alas ! that the Cham- 
 pernoons were not on board, after all ! He had 
 escorted them up to the lofty pilot-house, and 
 there of course they found 
 
 Not Frederic Haydock nor Hiram Brinkerhoff, 
 but the Doctor of Divinity. 
 
 And he explained to them what they could 
 never have known. " My dear," said Effie, in a 
 half aside, " Do you see they are beginning the 
 pyramids ? Do you see those heaps of square 
 stones half way up the bluff ? " 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 79 
 
 In fact these solid heaps looked like causeways 
 for giants where the giants preferred to have the 
 stepping-stones square rather than hexagonal. 
 They frowned down upon the waves of the 
 freshet. 
 
 " Those cubical stones, madam," said the agent 
 of the publishing board, "are paving stones. 
 When the river goes down, the bank will be 
 paved with them." 
 
 "Why, have they only just come ? " said Effie. 
 
 " Oh no, indeed ! " said he, laughing. " But 
 they are too valuable to be swept down by the 
 flood. They are taken up before it comes and 
 stored there against the dry weather." 
 
 To this hour Effie does not know whether he 
 was chaffing her. But he was not. 
 
 Both of them had their sketch-books out. It 
 was all so fascinating. They never tired of the 
 mules, they were so queer. Every black boy was 
 more wildly picturesque, not to say mysterious, 
 in his oddity than his predecessor. The " Chester 
 Boone" did not quite keep to her promise of 
 " half an hour," but in an hour from the time 
 when Effie set her palette the " Chester Boone " 
 and the travellers were under way. 
 
 And the kind Doctor of Divinity showed the 
 ladies their first Indian mound. 
 
80 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 Ah ! if it were the duty of this writer only to 
 make a little romance, in six parts, of the sail 
 from Memphis to Helena ! Material enough is 
 there, though that romance should be the three 
 orthodox volumes of Mr. Murray ! 
 
 " But," 
 as was before said, 
 
 " But wiser Fate says, No." 
 
 Unwritten be the history of that evening. Un 
 written its songs, its theological conversations, 
 its weird torchlight landings, the dance in the 
 after cabin, the poker in the cabin before. 
 
 The next morning the ladies met by appoint 
 ment, early, that they might have a walk on the 
 forward deck upstairs before breakfast and see 
 the sunrise. The sunrise was, of course, beauti 
 ful, but, as it happened, on this morning it had 
 not the grandeur of the sunset. The morning 
 was cold enough for them to want to walk briskly, 
 and every thing was exciting and interesting. The 
 " Tow-heads," as the queer tufts at the end of 
 the cut-offs are called, the occasional passage of 
 the boat through a cut-off, the tints of green be 
 ginning to appear on the shore, and once the salute 
 of the " Montezuma," as they met her blithely 
 working her way up the river such things, all 
 strange, kept them on the lookout. Then the 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 8 1 
 
 profound solitude ! That this giant ship which 
 bore them should be forging on through this 
 wilderness, where, but that they had seen the 
 " Montezuma," there was no other sign of man. 
 And she, she left only that faint shred of smoke 
 on the air to show that she had lived. 
 
 " That smoke wraith represents history, dear 
 Hester." 
 
 But just as Effie said this there was token of 
 man s being again. A. ting on the pilot s bell 
 made them look up to him, and then they climbed 
 to his friendly house to ask what manoeuvre was 
 in progress. He pointed far, far away, and com 
 pelled them to see a little speck which he said 
 was a flag, a signal. So the great boat devoured 
 the waters, made nothing of the miles between, 
 and, before the ladies could believe it, was near 
 enough to the rag or flag for them to see a man 
 standing on the little strip of green which the 
 pilot said was the levee. Water behind him, 
 water before him. He looked like Campbell s 
 last man, or like some Algonkin s first. It was 
 he who had shown the flag. 
 
 The pilot explained that a road ran along the 
 
 top of the levee where the country was not 
 
 flooded, and by this road the man had come. 
 
 In fact, after a few minutes, he pointed out the 
 
 6 
 
82 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 
 wagon which the man had left in the bush 
 beyond. 
 
 Nearer the boat swept, and nearer. The figure 
 of the man, his features, were perfectly plain. 
 The boat touched, the gangway was lowered. 
 Two black men ran down from the " Chester 
 Boone" and seized the stranger s wallet and 
 saddle-bags. He ran up the plank with them 
 and the boat was off. 
 
 It was Frederic Haydock. 
 
 He hurried on board, and before his foot had 
 well touched the deck the great gangway rose 
 and pointed heavenward again. The pilot s 
 bells struck " ting ting," the giant snorted his 
 satisfaction, and the " Chester Boone " resumed 
 her way through what was solitude again, now 
 that she had absorbed this little atom of outside 
 life. 
 
 Effie waited for an instant, just an instant, for 
 Hester to speak first, as she almost always did. 
 
 But Hester did not speak first, and then Effie 
 knew that there was such a secret between them 
 as there had never been before. And she spoke 
 first. 
 
 " I am so glad he has come," said she. " We 
 did miss them all day yesterday, for all dear Dr. 
 Summerfield." 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 83 
 
 By this time Hester was sure she could speak 
 carelessly, and she said, " Yes, I am very glad he 
 is here. But how in the world do you suppose 
 it happens ? And where is the other ? " 
 
 " How does it happen, you goose ? It happens 
 that he knows who is on this boat. That is how 
 it happens." 
 
 "Breakfast ready,- miss," grinned and spoke 
 the waiter from below. They hurried down 
 stairs ; and, as Erne had expected, but had not 
 dared to say, next their seats they found a chair 
 turned down by the waiter, as if reserved for a 
 passenger delayed ; and Dr. Summerfield s seat 
 was changed. He was sitting on the opposite 
 side of the table. Effie made the breakfast 
 loiter as long as she could, from the beginning. 
 But she need not have taken this trouble. Fred 
 eric Haddock s toilet was made, and well made, 
 in five minutes. He came and shook hands, 
 and sat down cheerily and freshly; and you 
 would never guess that he had been all night 
 riding across northern Mississippi in a planter s 
 wagon, that he might strike the " Boone " as he 
 had done. 
 
 " This time we did not expect you, Mr. Hay- 
 dock," said Effie, merrily. 
 
 Hester Sutphen wondered if she were blush- 
 
84 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 ing. Why in the world need Effie have said 
 that nonsense upstairs ? 
 
 " I am amazed at my own success," said he, 
 frankly. "The moment I found the Boorie 
 was off, with you on board, I was determined that 
 I would overhaul her somewhere." 
 
 " Good for you," would have been Effie s ejac 
 ulation had she. been used to slang, even in its 
 more gracious forms, and had she dared say what 
 she thought. But she and Hester both silently 
 respected the courage of the man. 
 
 And so a jolly breakfast follows. Haydock 
 was courtesy itself to Dr. Summerfield. He 
 made that nice old man find out that in taking 
 care of these ladies he had won Mr. Frederic 
 Haydock s abiding regard, if that were worth 
 any thing. Haydock told, with great humor, 
 the details of his adventures the day before of 
 how and when he learned that the ladies were 
 in Memphis, and then how he took the afternoon 
 train and pursued. He did not tell, nor did 
 Hester guess, what Effie figured out from the 
 guide-book afterwards that his night-ride 
 acros s those rough country roads was well-nigh 
 forty miles long. 
 
 Then followed an ideal morning. Oh, thou 
 hunted and baited child of civilization, think, if 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 85 
 
 thou canst, what it would be to spend one morn 
 ing of life without a bore, without a newspaper, 
 without a mail, without a telegram, without a 
 beggar, and without a morning call ! Nay, think 
 more than this ! Think what it would be to 
 have these evils wholly impossible to thee. Then 
 imagine a bland April morning of the latitude of 
 Mississippi a new flora passing like a shifting 
 panorama shade if you wish shade, sun if you 
 wish sun imagine books, pencils, paints, pa 
 pers, ink, canvas, a good piano, and dear friends 
 and .then say whether life has a right to ask 
 any thing more than it finds on such a morning 
 on such a craft as the " Chester Boone " ? 
 
 Dr. Summerfield asked Effie what was meant 
 by " tone " in pictures. 
 
 Effte said if he would come out on the western 
 guard they called it " western " though it often 
 looked north and south she would show him 
 Ruskin s experiment which illustrates his defini 
 tion. And so before Dr. Summerfield knew it 
 he and Erfie were talking art, and he was watch 
 ing her practice for three hours there. 
 
 And Frederick Haydock and Hester Sutphen 
 were walking up and down the deck forward till 
 she was tired. And then he had made for her a 
 seat where there was no wiad and just a little 
 
86 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 warmth from the chimney. And he was telling 
 her first about old school life at Antioch ; what a 
 noble, unselfish creature Hiram Brinkerhoff was ; 
 what a loss it was to him to lose Hiram, and how 
 happy they had been together. He told her of 
 the war, how he had come down this very river 
 with Sherman, told of adventures almost in sight 
 of where the boat ran. Why ! he came, nobody 
 could tell how, to telling of his experiences in 
 New Orleans since ; what is the life of a lonely 
 youngster there ; where it touches other life and 
 where it does not ; how lonely it is, and what 
 else it is! 
 
 And Frederic Haydock did not do all the talk 
 ing. Hester Sutphen told him things, which she 
 might have put in the newspaper, but which in 
 truth she had never told to a human being. She 
 told of her early life, of her mother s death, of 
 Norton and the Wheaton Academy, and how 
 strange it seemed to her when she was hardly 
 seventeen to be managing for herself as a teacher 
 of girls in the Southwest Milan Seminary. She 
 fairly caught herself asking him, as if he had 
 been Effie Abgar herself, if he thought she did 
 wrong when she defied the secretary of the trus 
 tees at Southwest Milan. 
 
 And Frederic Haydock had to bite his tongue 
 out lest he should say, 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 " You cannot do wrong. If you said it, it was 
 right." 
 
 But he did not say that. Metaphorically he 
 did bite his tongue out, and then with the new 
 tongue, which came in the place of that bitten 
 one, he said: 
 
 " I do not know what you call right. I know 
 that I should have been much pleased with my 
 self if I had been half so civil. And I am so glad 
 you left the brutes, if you did leave them." 
 
 " Leave them ! " said Hester. " I left that 
 horrid place before night, and I hope I may 
 never see it again. My dear Mr. Haydock, I did 
 not know " 
 
 But what she did not know Fred Haydock was 
 not told. Just at that moment from the deck 
 below, a clear tenor voice sang : 
 
 I sought my Lord in de wilderness, in de wil-der-ness, in de 
 
 % 
 
 5P 3 
 7 
 
 wil-der-ness; I sought my Lord in de wil-der-ness, For 
 
 *^ I m a-go-ing home. For I m go-ing home, For I m going 
 
88 
 
 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 home; I m just git-ting read-y, For I m go -ing home. 
 
 The wild, clear notes rang out so as to startle 
 them both. Hester ran forward to look over the 
 rail, and Haydock, without so much eagerness, 
 followed. Neither he nor she knew that three 
 hours had passed since breakfast. 
 The voice went on : 
 I found free grace in de wilderness, 
 
 In de wilderness, in de wilderness ; 
 I found free grace in de wilderness, 
 For I m a going home. 
 For I m going home, for I m going home ; 
 I m just gitting ready, for I m going home. 
 
 With the third verse some twenty of the deck 
 hands took up the chorus : 
 
 My father preaches in de wilderness, 
 
 In de wilderness, in de wilderness, 
 
 And so the weird song went on ; and Mr. Hay- 
 dock s tete-a-tete with Miss Sutphen was, for the 
 moment, ended. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 89 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 >\ S they went south the shores grew greener, 
 and the air more soft. Once, as they ran 
 in to the levee for some wood, Effie broke off with 
 her own hand a branch of fresh leaves, quite 
 large. Fred Haydock told her that she was the 
 dove after the deluge. And after every meal, 
 dinner, supper, breakfast how few they were 
 when one came to count them it seemed more 
 and more a thing of course that, while Effie 
 painted on the after-guards, or wrote in the after- 
 cabin, Mr. Haydock and Miss Sutphen should be 
 sitting in some shelter forward, or that he should 
 be reading to her the " Ring and the Book " while 
 she knitted, or that they should be walking to 
 gether for exercise, or in the evening, they should 
 be singing together at the same piano. It was 
 clear enough, however, the first time that Fred 
 Haydock sang, that he was not the absolute 
 tenor who had sung the praise of his own Amy in 
 the dark Palace on the banks of the Juniata. 
 
90 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 And all three of them all four, if you count 
 in Dr. Summerfield, who was very lovely and 
 kind all the time all four came to be good 
 friends with the other cabin travellers. They 
 had good novels which they read aloud in the 
 ladies end of the cabin. At night they had glees 
 or psalmody. At the mouth of the Tennessee 
 River the boat had taken on a very wild but very 
 simple family, who had somehow heard of Texas 
 and were going there, with the most pathetic 
 ignorance as to what and where it was, and why 
 they were goring. But, from the old grandsire of 
 eighty-five, who seemed for ever young when 
 there was a question as to a new home, down to 
 shy girls of four years and adventurous boys of 
 six and seven, dressed in the most extraordinary 
 costume which ever the wit of Northern Ala 
 bama devised, all were delighted to be on the 
 move. 
 
 And to the magic of Erne s kindness this tall 
 handsome girl, shy as the children, who for a day 
 staid in her state-room she was so frightened, re 
 vealed herself as a bride. Never did the designer, 
 in distant Lawrence, who painted the pattern 
 for that calico, suppose it was to be worn as a 
 bride s travelling dress ! But no matter for that ! 
 As true a heart beat under it as ever beat under 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 91 
 
 Madame Demorest s regulation uniform, and she 
 and he, so soon as they were married in the old 
 home on the western slope of the Alleghanies 
 back in Western Virginia, had determined to go 
 to Florida. Why to Florida, even Effie, with all 
 her tact, could not discover. She tried them with 
 talk of oranges and sugar-cane and bananas. 
 But they seemed to have little care for these 
 things. Even Effie could not imagine that that 
 stout young bridegroom had a hole in his lungs. 
 No ! It was only that they were determined that 
 they would go somewhere and that they had 
 heard of Florida. 
 
 " Like some other people I know," said Hester, 
 meekly, " who might be sitting over a hard coal 
 fire now, if they wanted to." 
 
 " Only they did not want to," said Mrs. Abgar, 
 laughing. "Dear heart, it is the mania of the 
 American people. They must pull up stakes 
 and travel." 
 
 "Say, rather," said Dr. Summerfield, more 
 wisely, "it is the mania of that part of the 
 American people whom you and I meet in steam 
 boats. If we wanted to study the traits of those 
 who stay at home we must knock at the doors of 
 their homes to find them." 
 
 " That s true enough ! I am as wise as the Eng- 
 
92 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 lish travellers who think all Americans live in 
 hotels, because those they see in hotels live in 
 them. What can they think the houses they ride 
 by are built for ? " 
 
 They had poked their great nose upon the levee 
 once and again, now to leave a barrel, now, it 
 would seem, only to leave a newspaper perhaps 
 to take an order once to leave two bedsteads, a 
 rocking-chair, a cooking-stove, a bride, her trunks 
 and a bridegroom ; in short, for any device by 
 which civilization might be set forward in what 
 seemed an utter wilderness. It was quite late in 
 the afternoon that the clerk came aft for the pur 
 pose to say that they had some heavy boilers to 
 land at Mr. Van Meter s plantation, and perhaps 
 the ladies would like to walk. 
 
 Like to ! of course they did. They landed 
 and were almost tempted to kneel like crusaders 
 and kiss the sod, so delicious was it to find spring 
 really in sway, to gather a handful of even the 
 simplest weeds. They struck off, up the river, on 
 the levee for a long pull, assured that they might 
 safely be gone an hour. But shall it be con 
 fessed? in ten minutes Hester was frightened. 
 If the " Boone " should go with all their house 
 hold goods, and they have to spend the rest of 
 their lives in Mississippi ! Dr. Summerfield tried 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 93 
 
 to reassure her. But the pleasure of the walk 
 was gone, and after pretending they were not 
 afraid a little they turned back with one accord, 
 built larger their branches of green leaves, and, 
 like Birnam Wood indeed, approached the friendly 
 monster. 
 
 It was impossible to believe that they had 
 been only thirty hours on the boat. In that 
 time they had entered on a wholly new arrange 
 ment of time and life. They had passed from 
 coal fires to balmy spring weather and delicate 
 green foliage ; and also ah me ! Hester Sut- 
 phen had held two long confidential talks with 
 Fred Haydock. It seemed as if they had been 
 a month on the voyage and the boat was home.. 
 
 As they drew near the boat a gentleman came 
 out from a little whitewashed shed which seemed 
 to be an outlying building of the plantation, of 
 which the larger buildings were hidden by trees, 
 a quarter of a mile away. He took out money, 
 which he gave to the black boy by his side, and 
 then with rapid step advanced to the " Chester 
 Boone," about a hundred yards in front of our 
 party. The boy followed with his carpet-bag. 
 
 Frederic Haydock and Hester Sutphen were 
 walking behind Dr. Summerfield and Mrs. Abgar, 
 occupied with each other. 
 
94 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 Effie had her eyes open. She suddenly made 
 a horrible botch about something Dr. Summer- 
 field was telling her, and said she was very glad 
 Mr. Glass was deposed by his Presbytery, when 
 she did not in the least know what she was say 
 ing. The truth was that she was simply watch 
 ing the stranger and the black boy. At last she 
 forced herself to turn back and say, 
 
 " Mr. Haydock, is not that your friend Mr. 
 Brinkerhoff ? " 
 
 Fred Haydock started, had the question re 
 peated to him, looked forward and cried, " Of 
 course," then with a queer school-boy war-whoop 
 and three shrill calls, " Hi ! hi ! hi ! " he brought 
 the stranger to bay. 
 
 The moment Hiram Brinkerhoff turned he 
 recognized them. A minute more and they were 
 all together, and he was congratulating himself 
 that he had not taken the " Morgan," as she 
 passed down that very day. 
 
 To say the truth Effie Abgar was not very 
 sorry. For she had felt already that the time 
 might come when Dr. Summerfield should be 
 perfectly informed as to tone, color, perspective, 
 middle distance, foreground, broken lights, mo 
 tive and action ; and she was quite certain that 
 she had herself received all she could digest as 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 95 
 
 to the relations between the Directors of the 
 Publishing Board and the Trustees, and about 
 the legitimate supervision of the Board of Mana 
 gers and the President on the affairs of both 
 these bodies. 
 
 For Frederic Haydock and Hester Sutphen, 
 they seemed to be in a mood in which most 
 things were satisfactory. Both of them seemed 
 to think it was quite as well that Hiram Brink- 
 erhoff should be there. They would have 
 thought it quite as well if he had not been there. 
 
 For Hiram Brinkerhoff himself, he expressed 
 himself very promptly the moment they were all 
 on board. 
 
 " It is so lucky that I struck you ! Have you 
 ever seen a sugar plantation, Mrs. Abgar ? " 
 
 " Only in Vermont," said she. " We put on 
 long boots, and then I filled mine with wet snow 
 and retired ignominiously." 
 
 " Then you are just the person to see the 
 finest plantation in the United States, and I 
 believe in the world. If you count in the men 
 and women who carry it on, you will say so too." 
 
 Fred Haydock and Miss Sutphen were by 
 this time looking at something in his scrap-book, 
 which he had brought out from his state-room. 
 
 " Miss Sutphen ! " cried the impetuous Hiram, 
 
96 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 eager in his plan, " let me interrupt you for a 
 moment, for this must be settled before the boat 
 starts. Would not you like to make a visit at 
 the finest sugar plantation on the river? We 
 could stop to-morrow night." 
 
 " What did you say ? " said Hester, startled a 
 little, and hardly getting her vessel into action. 
 
 " I want to persuade you ladies to stop at a 
 beautiful plantation on the river and see the way 
 people live here. Will you stay if Mrs. Abgar 
 will ? " 
 
 " Stay where ? " said Mrs. Abgar. " This is 
 the first I have heard of it. You do not expect 
 us to stay awywhere where we are not invited." 
 
 "No, indeed; but if you will only do it you 
 will be invited in no time. This is the whole 
 story," and Hiram had to speak fast, for the 
 bell was beginning to ring the wandering pas 
 sengers on board "I am on my way down to 
 this earthly paradise, a fine plantation on the 
 coast, Mrs. Abgar, it is called Arcadie ; is not 
 that a pretty name ? Mr. Le Clerc will be de 
 lighted if you will both make them a visit, and 
 Madame Le Clerc and my lovely friend Eugenie 
 and Miss Ferguson, they are all so nice. Now 
 just say you could possibly stop there, and they 
 would be so much pleased to see you." Then, as 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 97 
 
 he saw his friend Fred s woe-begone face, Hiram 
 added, " If you would all give up just two days to 
 see this beautiful place, why you would enjoy it 
 as much in one way as you did Cincinnati in 
 another." 
 
 By this happy word " all " poor Fred was saved 
 from the lowest depths. If he was not to be 
 counted out from the party they might stay a 
 month for all he cared. 
 
 But Mrs. Abgar was herself again. Without 
 the least asperity, but with perfectly defined 
 firmness, she said, " Oh think a moment, Mr. 
 Brinkerhoff, and you see it is out of the ques 
 tion. How could Miss Sutphen and I think of 
 pushing ourselves, never so indirectly, on people 
 we had never seen ? " 
 
 Hiram Brinkerhoff saw he had made a botch 
 of it, and had sense enough not to persist in a 
 blunder. He retired to arrange for his state 
 room, and in a few minutes the boat was under 
 way. 
 
 That evening Doctor Summerfield was able to 
 prepare his quarterly report, without giving up 
 his time to the instruction or entertainment of 
 Mrs. Abgar. Mr. Hiram Brinkerhoff and she sat 
 in the pilot-house, while Mr. Haydock and Miss 
 Sutphen were well wrapped in travelling cloaks 
 
 7 
 
WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 somewhere forward. Were they studying the 
 newer stars which began to appear south of the 
 sky lines more familiar to her ? Were they dis 
 cussing favorite novels ? Was he telling her old 
 stories of the camp, and she, to her own surprise, 
 going over old hidden experiences of her own 
 life which she had hardly entrusted even to 
 Effie*? Ah me! I cannot tell. Only it was a 
 long eager talk, and neither of them knew how 
 fast the time passed by. 
 
 For Mrs. Abgar, she was not sorry, as has 
 been said, to have so intelligent a man to talk 
 with. The pilot said but little, sometimes had a 
 word for a young man by him, what Mark Twain 
 calls a cub, who regarded him with untold 
 reverence, and seemed to be learning to pilot ; 
 and, when Effie or Hiram Brinkerhoff asked for 
 any information, the pilot gave it cordially and 
 intelligently. A monarch he, and a well-bred 
 monarch, who knew his place. Mrs. Abgar was 
 not more than woman. She was not, therefore, 
 without curiosity to. learn more about that Amy 
 of whom he had sung with the exquisite tenor, 
 and with whom he was more in love than ever, 
 after fifteen years. Hiram Brinkerhoff was not 
 a pennyweight more than man. He was, there 
 fore, very curious to know more of the Philip 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 99 
 
 Abgar who was willing to let this beautiful wife 
 travel without escort so far from home for so 
 long a time. Why did she never drop a word 
 about him? Perhaps Effie asked herself the 
 question, " Why did he never drop a word about 
 Amy ? " But, when she made little plans of lead 
 ing up to the unknown Amy, somehow she had 
 not the courage to carry them out. And for him, 
 in his blundering man-fashion, he took it for 
 granted that something would reveal all myste 
 ries about Philip Abgar, and so he made no 
 plans at all. So the long evening sped by with 
 out any personal talk. But it were hard to tell 
 what other subject, except these personal mat 
 ters, was not talked upon. Art, criticism, litera 
 ture, poetry, actors, actresses, artists of every 
 kind, music and musicians, the opera and the 
 great singers, magazines and publishers, the 
 authors he had known and those she wanted to 
 know, the books she had read and those of them 
 which he knew and those he did not know, his 
 tory, philosophy, theology, religion, hymns and 
 hymn-writers, preachers and sermons, politics, 
 politicians, race, beggars, social science, charity, 
 housekeeping, party-giving, dancing, talking, 
 friends, friendship, love, marriage, home, educa 
 tion, schools, public and private, governesses, 
 
100 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 only children, large families what in the world 
 does not come in review when a thoughtful, 
 high-trained young man/ who has lived much 
 alone, has travelled much abroad and has read 
 many books, happens to meet with a high- 
 trained young woman, who has read many 
 books, has lived much alone and has never gone 
 abroad ! 
 
 What interested Effie most, or what she 
 thought interested her most, was that he had 
 not only seen many States, but " many men." 
 She remembered the classical lines. He had 
 the most modest way of speaking of them, but 
 he seemed to have had a gift of meeting just the 
 interesting people. Thus, when they talked of 
 style, she said, " General Grant s English is re 
 markably good. Did you happen to read his 
 report of the very last battle of the war ? " 
 
 " I was in Washington the day it was pub 
 lished. As it happened, I had met him only the 
 night before, and it seemed as if he were talk- 
 ing." 
 
 Or, when something was Said of the perspec 
 tive of clouds, and she cited Ruskin, he said, 
 " No man looks less like your idea of him. He 
 came into the reading-room of the Workingmen s 
 College, once when I was sitting there, and fell 
 
OF A PULLMAN. IOI 
 
 into talk with a gentleman by my side." He 
 had seen Napoleon at his last review ; he had 
 heard Martineau preach ; he was present when 
 the Queen opened Parliament ; he was on duty 
 at Norfolk the day Jeff. Davis was imprisoned ; 
 he had in his trunk the photograph likeness 
 which the President of Mexico had given him. 
 All this came out by the merest accidents; nor 
 was there the least wish t>n his part to say, " I 
 was here," or * I was there." But, in three hours 
 talk, there were just enough of these accidents to 
 surprise Effie with the thought of how very quiet 
 her life had been and how much it had been a 
 life of books while his had been a life .of action. 
 
 On his part there was not surprise that she 
 knew so much, and had thought so much, and 
 had felt so much. For Effie Abgar was not the 
 first intelligent and charming woman whom 
 Hiram Brinkerhoff had met in this active life. 
 Perhaps there was no surprise at all. Perhaps, 
 from the first, he took her even balance, what 
 seemed to him the perfect harmony of her 
 thoughts and her emotions, as something en 
 tirely of course in a woman whose voice was so 
 sweet, whose face was so lovely, whose motion 
 was so graceful, and whose bearing was so digni 
 fied and yet so easy. When he went to bed that 
 
102 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 night, and tried to analyze the delight of this 
 long evening s talk, he did not own to surprise. 
 He took it all as a thing of course that it should 
 be delightful. What was unusual, he said to 
 himself, was that she should be so thoroughly 
 right, even on subjects where you would have 
 said she might know nothing, and might never 
 have thought. That with sense so acute, and 
 passions so warm, she should never overstep by 
 a hair s breadth ; and that with judgment so 
 steady, analysis so perfect, and conscience so 
 stern, she should never be cold, nor fall short by 
 a hand-breadth. Her choice of words was won 
 derful. Any fool could see that, he said to him 
 self. But how in the world does she know 
 things which nobody can have told her; pass 
 correct judgment on the instant in cases which 
 she has not heard argued ; and, in short, without 
 any experience of the world, more than rival ! in 
 nicety of perception the oldest stager of them 
 all? 
 
 All which, Master Hiram Brinkerhoff, is to 
 ask why a truly noble woman is wholly outside 
 and beyond the scales, and standards, and meas 
 uring staves of your human philosophies and 
 analyses. 
 
 All four they slept in their several state- 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 1.03 
 
 rooms happily and soundly. It was only Dr. Sum- 
 merfield, who sat up too late over his figures, and 
 could not make the accounts balance, who lay toss 
 ing in bed regretting his third cup of green tea. 
 
 Our little story must not linger. Given two 
 ladies who loved each other, and two men who 
 loved each other, who had so fortunately and so 
 skilfully gained together the luxurious repose 
 and companionship of a first-class packet-boat 
 on the river ; it is not hard to imagine one part 
 of what passed on the happy spring day which 
 followed their meeting. For that varied adven 
 ture which relieves such a voyage of all monot 
 ony, the story must not pause to speak of it. 
 Only, after dinner, after the ladies naps, when 
 they were all together in the pilot-house, a smoke 
 miles below, far down beyond the green, an 
 nounced an approaching vessel. Before the 
 travellers could make out her form, the pilot had 
 declared that she was the " River Queen " on 
 her way up from New Orleans. 
 
 A mile in five minutes by one boat, and a mile 
 in three minutes by the other, as they approach 
 each other, bring the two soon together. Then 
 signals by the bell intimated that the " Queen " 
 wished to speak the " Boone ; " the engines of 
 each boat were "slowed," and they drew near 
 
104 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 each other cautiously. An instant more showed 
 that no one was to cross from boat to boat as 
 had been at first supposed. The first officer of 
 the " Queen " showed himself on her Texas, and 
 in his hand waved a paper parcel. As the boats 
 passed he flung it with a skilful throw; one of 
 the hands of the " Boone " caught it and tossed 
 it to the waiting captain above. Both boats 
 swept off on their course, whistled courteously a 
 parting salute, and, as they say in the French 
 chambers, " the incident was exhausted." 
 
 Not quite exhausted ! In a moment more the 
 captain came up into the pilot-house, a most un 
 usual courtesy. He handed to Mrs. Abgar a 
 letter. 
 
 " The Queen stopped to leave this for you, 
 Madame. Mr. Haydock, here is yesterday s 
 1 Picayune. " And he gave him the newspaper. 
 
 " For me ! " cried Effie, amazed. 
 
 " For you ! " cried Hester. 
 
 And Effie broke open her letter. 
 
 FROM MRS. LE CLERC TO MRS. E. ABGAR. 
 
 ARCADIE, Wednesday Evening. 
 
 MY DEAR MRS. ABGAR, I have only .to-day 
 learned that you are to be in our neighborhood with 
 your friends, and I write, although in haste, to beg 
 you not to pass us on your way down the river. I 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 105 
 
 know very well how much of pleasure you have 
 before you. But surely, after your long journey, you 
 will need some rest, and I cannot but hope that you 
 and your friends will stay with us long enough to 
 secure it. 
 
 Really, although our life is very simple, there will 
 be a good deal here that will be new to you ; and, at 
 the least, we can assure you of a cordial Southern 
 welcome. 
 
 Do not feel as if we were strangers. I must know 
 many friends of yours among my Northern friends, 
 and our friend Miss Ferguson, who is as eager as I 
 am that you shall stay with us, feels sure that her 
 niece was at Miss Sutphen s school. 
 
 Be sure that your visit will be to us a very real 
 pleasure. My husband will be on the levee to wel 
 come you as the " Boone " comes in. 
 Very truly yours. 
 
 ADELIE LE CLERC. 
 
 " That is hospitality," said Effie Abgar, after 
 she had twice read through the letter, and made 
 sure that it was indeed for her. 
 
 " How in the world did they know we were 
 here?" said Hester. "I know, Effie. They 
 must have been friends of that nice Mrs. Cheyne 
 in Louisville. She said she had a sister on the 
 coast ; and I did not know what on the coast 
 meant." 
 
 Then Effie had to speak, though she knew she 
 
106 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 crimsoned as she did so. " I do not think they 
 are Mrs. Cheyne s friends. They are Mr. Brink- 
 erhoff s friends ; and this is the Arcadie he de 
 scribed. Is it not so ? " 
 
 " Certainly it is," said he, frankly. " There is 
 no mystery. You said you could not go without 
 an invitation. I cannot but hope you will go, 
 now you see how much pleasure you will give." 
 
 " It would be very churlish to refuse so kind a 
 request," said Effie, quite carefully. "Do you 
 not think so, Hester ? " 
 
 And both the gentlemen stepped forward to 
 ask the pilot a question. 
 
 "Effie," said Hester, in a whisper, "if you 
 think it right, I should like to go of all things." 
 
 " Think it right ? " said Mrs. Abgar. " It would 
 be almost rude to refuse." 
 
 So they asked the gentlemen at what time 
 they should pass the house. Not till after mid 
 night ! But if Mr. Le Clerc were waiting for 
 them in the cold, all. the more rude to pass by ! 
 The gentlemen went down and made the ar 
 rangement with the captain. 
 
 And Effie Abgar felt, that in her first trial of 
 strength with this modest, thoughtful, deter 
 mined Hiram Brinkerhoff, she had come off 
 second best. 
 
 And she was not sorry. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. IO/ 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 T V HE mystery of the invitation is easily ex 
 plained. The moment Mr. Brinkerhoff had 
 found that he had begun at the wrong end with 
 Mrs. Abgar, and that her New England sense 
 of the proprieties was entirely shocked by the 
 idea of appearing anywhere uninvited, he had 
 walked to the clerk s office and had written this 
 telegram to Mrs. Le Clerc : 
 
 " Mrs. Abgar and party are on Boone. Would 
 you like to see them ? " 
 
 He had given his negro attendant the despatch, 
 had bidden him pull across the river " like fury," 
 and deliver it at Chicot at the telegraph office. A 
 silver half dollar, in those days an unusual sight, 
 had stimulated the boy. Fortunately for Hiram, 
 he had written from Cincinnati a full letter to 
 Mrs. Le Clerc describing the picture gallery and 
 the ladies they met there, and had gone into some 
 little detail about them and their plans. Thus 
 was it that she was well prepared to write her 
 
108 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 courteous invitation, when, within two hours 
 after his despatch was written, she received it at 
 Arcadie. 
 
 Of course the kind letter involved a change 
 of plan. The ladies had to pack their trunks 
 Friday night instead of Saturday morning. Fred 
 Haydock hesitated whether he would or would 
 not accept Hiram s invitation to stay at Arcadie 
 as his friend. But at last the doubtful scale de 
 cided in favor of staying. He could not bear to 
 bid Hiram good-by that night perhaps for fifteen 
 years more. If they parted now, Heaven only 
 knew when they should meet again. So the 
 friendly captain was informed that all four would 
 leave the boat at Arcadie. 
 
 The friendly captain was not sure that he 
 should know which plantation was Arcadie, nor 
 was the friendly pilot. As for Mr. Le Clerc s 
 name, there were three or four gentlemen -of that 
 name within twenty miles of each other on the 
 " Coast." So now Effie and Hester began to be 
 afraid that they should be left at midnight at a 
 strange plantation, where the lady did not even 
 know Hiram Brinkerhoff when she saw him. 
 The disgrace of such an accident overwhelmed 
 Effie, whose imagination was brilliant enough to 
 forecast every step of the mad adventure the 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 109 
 
 landing on a muddy levee ; the poking along in the 
 dark among howling curs and blind avenues, till 
 they came to the back-door of the wrong house ; 
 the knocking, timidly, and then wildly, for en 
 trance the head poked out of a window the 
 cross question and the meek reply. 
 
 Why had she ever committed herself to an ad 
 venture so crazy! When she had once said 
 " No ! " why had she not held to it ? What a 
 goose to give way only because a pretty note, 
 in a nice hand-writing, on a neat sheet of note- 
 paper, had been thrown on board the- boat ! Why 
 Had she not held to the regular etiquettes to 
 which she was born ! 
 
 But when- some broken words of hers expressed 
 such doubts, the wondering pilot turned his 
 broadest face and kindliest smile on her. He 
 bade her lose all fear. " We shall find em some 
 how," he said ; but how he was to find them, in 
 the darkness of midnight, with the river mist 
 hanging over land and water, the pilot did not 
 explain. 
 
 The news of so large a departure was, in its 
 way, quite a shock to the little party in the 
 ladies cabin. But by ten all the other passengers 
 had " told good by," as the Southern phrase has 
 it ; only Dr. Summerfield sat up a little longer. 
 
1 10 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 In half an hour more, however, that worthy man 
 parted from them, and then, hour after hour, the 
 vigils continued of the four. The law of Natural 
 Selection, which another generation called the 
 law of " Elective Affinities," left Hester talking 
 with Frederic and Effie with Hiram. 
 
 Twelve o clock, and they talked. 
 
 One o clock, and they talked. 
 
 Quarter to two, and a lad came aft to say, 
 " The landing is in sight, ladies. You need not 
 hurry. You have fifteen minutes before we are 
 there." 
 
 " Then how in the world can the landing be in 
 sight ? " asked the impetuous Hester. And they 
 all walked forward to see. 
 
 Far, far away as the boat rushed on was a speck 
 of light. This the ladies were told was the signal 
 on shore which Mr. Le Clerc had lighted to direct 
 the pilot. 
 
 " How like Robinson Crusoe ! I can see him in 
 the picture, piling on the logs ! Only no vessel 
 came ! " 
 
 There was a fascination for a minute or two in 
 watching the speck. Then the girls went back 
 for their traps ; and, with shawl-straps, umbrellas 
 and the rest, stood waiting. The boat rushed 
 toward its goal faster than ever, it seemed. A 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 1 1 1 
 
 few minutes more and they could see a white 
 shed and dark figures moving to and fro. Nearer 
 and nearer ! There is no place along that steep 
 shore where a boat cannot run up and land her 
 passengers. Nearer and nearer ! A gentleman 
 with a lad behind him is visible, and three or four 
 larger Negroes. Nearer and nearer ! The great 
 landing-plank of the larboard side swung round 
 and hovered above the shore. "Ting! ting!" 
 The pilot stopped the engines. Flash ! from the 
 depths appeared two great pine-knot torches, 
 which, with the pine fire on shore, make the 
 whole as light as day. 
 
 "All ready, madam !" 
 
 " Good-by ! Good-by, captain ! " 
 
 And the ladies ran on shore led by the gentle 
 men, fast followed by porters with trunks. An 
 instant, and all are landed, the porters are back 
 again, " ting ! ting ! " and the palace sweeps off, 
 while the ladies and their friends are receiving 
 the welcome of their new home. 
 
 "The boys will see to the trunks. It is so 
 short a walk that I have no carriage here. Will 
 Mrs. Abgar take my arm ? or which is Mrs. 
 Abgar ? " 
 
 So cordial, so thoughtful in every act were the 
 father and son, that Effie s terrors were gone in a 
 
112 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 moment. In a merry party they walked through 
 the gloom which settled on them as they left the 
 pine fire. It did seem mysterious enough. Great 
 trees concealed the stars from them, and how and 
 why Mr. Le Clerc turned when he did, or bade 
 her avoid this step or that, or found a gate to 
 open, Effie did not know. But all wondering was 
 short. In a couple of minutes they were on the 
 steps of an immense veranda. The open door 
 of a hall which was a hall, cheerfully lighted, 
 invited their entrance. A lady stood in the door 
 way, and stepped cheerfully forward to say, 
 
 " Welcome to Arcadie ! " 
 
 "I am* ashamed to appear at such an hour," 
 said Effie, " and more ashamed now that you 
 have been sitting up for us." 
 
 " My dear friend, it is nothing. Mrs. Le Clerc 
 was sorry not to do so, but I would not let her. 
 She is not quite well. And you must be so tired ! " 
 
 The welcome, the simplicity and ease, and the 
 beauty and completeness of every arrangement, 
 made the ladies feel more at home than they 
 could have believed possible. Glad to go to bed, 
 of course, at two o clock in the morning. But, as 
 they pulled aside their mosquito nets, they could 
 not but talk a little about the charm which 
 seemed to have surrounded them from the 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 113 
 
 moment the magic light had appeared in the 
 distance. Palace after palace welcomes them on 
 their travels. But in this palace one is so thor 
 oughly at home ! 
 
 And how deliciously sleep comes on when one 
 does not hear the distant " thud, thud " of the 
 engine, and when one s body from head to foot 
 does not vibrate with the jar of the gigantic 
 wheels ! 
 
 The thoughtful Hiram had telegraphed to New 
 Orleans for the letters which awaited the ladies 
 there, and, as they sat at a late breakfast, these 
 letters were brought in. Perhaps this seemed 
 even more like magic to Effie and Hester than 
 the roses and jasmines which were in fresh heaps 
 around them. It did show how long was Mr. 
 BrinkerhofFs arm, and how thoughtful his kind 
 ness. And Effie looked her gratitude to him when 
 she understood at last that the letters did not rain 
 down by miracle. Perhaps the one only thing in 
 life that she had longed for, as she dressed her 
 self, was that she might know that all at home 
 were well. 
 
 While the Northern ladies sat reading their 
 letters, the Southern ladies, one of whom was 
 Northern too, fell upon Mr. Brinkerhoff in talk : 
 
 " And how is dear Mrs. Brinkerhoff ? " 
 8 
 
114 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 " Thank you. She was very well when I left 
 her. I am disappointed that there is no letter 
 from her." 
 
 " Is she as young and as lovely as ever ? " 
 
 " I am sure I think so," said Hiram, blushing 
 scarlet. " She is as busy as ever with her schools 
 and her sewing, and her what not. I tell her she 
 tries to run half the world." 
 
 " And why did you not bring her with you ? " 
 and so on. 
 
 Both Hester Sutphen and Effie Abgar after 
 wards acknowledged to each other, guiltily, that 
 they drank in every word while they pretended 
 to be reading letters of which just then they did 
 not see one line ! 
 
 But if they are ever to go to Texas the story 
 must not loiter even in Arcadie. All the same 
 they loitered there. The gentlemen had to tear 
 themselves away after the second day. Uncle 
 Sam s business and the business of Jeffrey, Petrie 
 & Jeffrey admitted no more delay. Even Mr. Le 
 Clerc s ingenuity could not pretend that the 
 United States government needed Mr. Haydock 
 at Arcadie or that Mr. Brinkerhoff would find 
 large firms of retailers of drugs at the little vil 
 lage at the Post-office. 
 
 The ladies stayed longer. "Why do you 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 11$ 
 
 not spend the summer ? " said Mrs. Le Clerc, 
 very sweetly and frankly. "You say you ran 
 away from that horrible snow and ice, only to be 
 in a pleasant home. Shall you find any thing 
 pleasanter than this in that murderous Texas ? " 
 And indeed Hester wondered at her own firmness 
 that she said " No." For, as to Erne, she had not 
 been firm. She had confessed that the plan of 
 the party was none of hers. Arcadie seemed so 
 lovely to her that she would have eaten lotos 
 there as long as there was lotos to eat. And all 
 the plan-making was thrown back upon poor 
 Hester. 
 
 Before the gentlemen left, poor Fred Haydock 
 was nearly beside himself, because he neither 
 dared ask Hester s leave to stay for ever where 
 she stayed, and, on the other hand, because he 
 dared not go away without asking. So they 
 came to the last afternoon, which was given to a 
 party on the canal. The canal leads back from 
 the river to a lake or bayou ; how far back the 
 explorers did not find. Nor did they care indeed. 
 It was always afternoon to them, and whatever 
 they saw was May ! 
 
 In a great cart drawn by three mules abreast 
 were many chairs, in which the ladies sat and 
 rode, escorted by the gentlemen on horseback. 
 
Il6 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 Then they arrived at a narrow canal, in which 
 were a large and a small flat-boat. Haydock and 
 Fred Le Clerc, who had made paddles for the 
 occasion, went in advance in the smaller boat. 
 The oldsters, with the little girl and her nurse, 
 went in the large boat, towed by a negro man 
 named Antoine, on shore. 
 
 The canal was only wide enough for the boat. 
 On both sides were the most interesting and 
 wonderful trees and shrubs and vines, perfectly 
 green. Indeed it looked, as Mrs. Abgar said, 
 like the pictures of Paradise, where they always 
 mix up pines and palms and land and water. 
 They saw no bears nor deer, though there are 
 plenty there. But they did see, oh ! so many 
 beautiful birds ! So they sailed for perhaps three 
 miles more, with new wonders all the time. Then 
 they came where a large cypress-tree had been 
 felled across the canal ! What was it to them ? 
 To sit still or to sail it was all one! The 
 pioneers rejoined them, and Effie made a nice, 
 characteristic sketch, and then the learned said 
 that it would not .be afternoon any longer, and 
 that they must turn their faces home. 
 
 But when they came back to the cart, lo ! a 
 chance for an adventure ! Mr. Le Clerc s horse 
 had broken his bridle and run away. Now the 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 thoughtful Mrs. Le Clerc had arranged that Miss 
 Sutphen should ride him home, because she had 
 guessed that before Mr. Haydock left, he and 
 Miss Hester would be well left together for an 
 hour without listeners. Kind Mrs. Le Clerc ! 
 What perfect hospitality ! And now ? Why had 
 this beast broken bridle ? Fred Haydock, who 
 generally believed in his star, and not without 
 reason, could have groaned aloud would have 
 done so but that the manners of civilized society 
 forbid. Did Hester care ? Quien sabef Wild 
 horses would not have made her tell. With 
 perfect willingness she seemed to acquiesce. 
 Fred Le Clerc and Hiram both offered their 
 horses, but not even Mrs. Le Clerc dared say 
 that they could be trusted with an unskilful 
 rider and the flutter of that rider s dress. Hes 
 ter stepped up into the cart by the ready chair, 
 begged Mrs. Le Clerc not to think of her nor be 
 worried, assured Mr. Le Clerc that there was 
 room for him on her seat, and so they took up 
 their way, when, as the twilight began to gloam, 
 a hurrah, a rapid movement, and the horse reap 
 peared. He had run home, had been captured 
 by a negro boy, and had been brought back in 
 triumph. So he had six miles extra that day for 
 his pains. The whole party stopped again. The 
 
Il8 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 side-saddle was exchanged for the Mexican sad 
 dle which Mr. Le Clerc had ridden. Fred Le 
 Clerc and Hiram, after seeing that they were 
 not needed, dashed forward to announce at home 
 that there was no accident. Frederic Haydock 
 and Hester Sutphen followed more decorously, 
 and the slow cart, with its trijuge team, as Mr. 
 Le Clerc called it, brought up the steady rear. 
 
 Hester tried her stirrup, tried her beast on dif 
 ferent paces, tried a canter over a deserted field, 
 tried a sober walk. She was indeed conscious 
 that, if she and Mr. Haydock rode quietly side by 
 side, a crisis was not far away. 
 
 And so it proved ! 
 
 " Miss Hester, if that horse had not come back 
 I should have died ! " 
 
 " Then we are very glad the horse came back," 
 said Hester. " But why were you responsible ? " 
 
 " Oh, not that ! I was not responsible. But 
 all day long oh, Miss Hester, do not laugh at 
 me all day long I have counted so on this half 
 hour in which to tell you what you know so 
 well." 
 
 And he was silent, and she knew she did 
 know. But she said nothing. 
 
 " If it seems madness to you, let it seem so. 
 If it seems foolish, let it seem so. But I cannot 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 119 
 
 believe that I had never seen you before that day 
 at Jersey City, and if you say I never must see 
 you again do not laugh now, Miss Hester 
 if you say that, I shall die. You have taught me 
 a great deal in this fortnight. But you cannot 
 teach me how to live without you." 
 
 Then Hester knew she must speak. The man 
 had behaved manfully. He had his rights too. 
 And Hester tried one sentence which would not 
 come, and she tried another ; and then she looked 
 frankly up to him only he could not see her 
 in the darkness and she said, in just her 
 freshest, sweetest way, 
 
 " And why should I try to ? " 
 Then how he thanked her and blessed her ! 
 Then how he promised her to be good to her and 
 true to her and guard her as never woman was 
 guarded ! Then how he told her about his par 
 adise at San Antoine ; or, if she liked it better, 
 he could and would resign and go back to New 
 Hampshire with her. Then how they fell back 
 upon the Palace life ; and she asked him if he 
 knew that they thought he- was a girl and called 
 him Honora MacPherson. And then the rattle 
 of the mules behind was heard, and they had to 
 whip up and keep out of the way with a pace too 
 fast for talking. And then they came upon a 
 
120 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 good place to walk ah me ! all places were 
 good to walk. Could they be all night in going 
 home, it would be none too long. But the lights 
 of the little homestead village would appear, and 
 then the lights of Arcadie. 
 
 And when they came to the house the whole 
 family must rush to the piazza to meet them, and 
 one would hold the horse, and another would 
 take Hester s whip, and Fred could only press 
 her hand hard as she sprang to her feet. He 
 could not clasp her round her waist, as he would 
 have done had this been in the " Pirate s Com 
 panions " or the " Smugglers Prize," and imprint 
 a thousand kisses on her. 
 
 For, alas ! the etiquette of modern society did 
 not permit him. 
 
 But fortune favors lovers, favors the brave, 
 favors the good, and favors the young ! And 
 Hester and Fred were lovers, were brave, were 
 good, and were young ! Fortune was so kind 
 that, after every bag was packed, after tea was 
 finished, after all had been said which must be 
 said, except " Good-bye," the " George Christy " 
 did not come. Now it was in the "George 
 Christy " that the gentlemen were to go. And 
 so they sat in the veranda or gallery, under the 
 great colonnade, and waited for her, hour after 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 121 
 
 hour. And lovely Mrs. Le Clerc, with all her skill 
 in letting people alone, took care that neither 
 Bob nor Fanchon should come near Mr. Haydock 
 for stories, nor Miss Sutphen for paper dolls. 
 Two hours three of solid comfort before the 
 " Christy " came ! 
 
 Did M. Le Clerc know or did he not know, 
 did he guess, or did he not guess, when he 
 asked Fred to sing " Maudit Printemps," by way 
 of illustrating something he was telling Mrs. 
 Abgar ? 
 
 " Maudit ! " said she : " that is hard on poor 
 Spring." 
 
 "Oh!" replied he, laughing, "that is only 
 French fashion. It does not mean more than 
 your Mr. Artemas Ward means by cussedness/ 
 Fred translates it bothersome/ when he sings 
 it in English." 
 
 So Fred sang, 
 
 MAUDIT PRINTEMPS. 
 
 T^ZWt 
 
 Je la voy - ais de ma fe - ne - - tre A la 
 
 
 ne tout cet hi - ver : Nous nous ai-nrions sans nous con-nai-tre ; 
 
122 
 
 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 
 
 
 Nos bai-sers se croi - saient dans 1 air. En - tre ces til - leuls 
 
 sans feuil - la - ge, Nous re - gar - der com -blait nos jours. 
 
 Aux arbres tu rends leur om - bra - - ge, Maudit prin - 
 
 JpglPcplr 
 
 temps, re-vien - dras-tu tou-jours? Aux arbres tu rends leur om- 
 
 A 
 
 V: 
 
 -v- 
 
 bra - - ge, Maudit prin-temps, re-vien - dras - tu tou - jours ? 
 
 BOTHERSOME SPRING. 
 
 I saw her sitting by her door, 
 
 Half-hidden yonder mid the trees, 
 
 And though we never met before 
 
 Our kisses crossed with every breeze. 
 
 Through naked boughs the winter through, 
 From door to door the sight was plain, 
 But now the leaves shut off the view : 
 Oh Spring, why need you come again ! 
 
 But now the leaves shut off the view, 
 
 Oh Spring, why need you come again 
 
 But to Fred Haydock something "else came as 
 " bothersome " as spring. Even paradise cannot 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 123 
 
 last for ever. At last a faint whistle up the river. 
 The groups break up, and watch, and listen. A 
 louder whistle and a louder. The plash of paddle- 
 wheels. 
 
 "We had better walk to the landing ! " 
 
 They all-walked together ; and the " Christy " 
 came. 
 
 " Good-bye ! " 
 
 "Good-bye!" 
 
124 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 " JT> UT where is the Pullman all this time ? " 
 -*-^ asks the indignant reader. " What do I 
 care," he growls, " as to the loves or hates of Mr. 
 Frederic Haydock and Miss Hester Sutphen ? 
 It was the adventures of a Pullman which were 
 promised to me. And now, all that I am told is 
 the fortunes of a palace afloat and the hospitality 
 of a palace not on wheels." 
 
 Reader, be still, and persevere. 
 For the week at Arcadie could not last for ever. 
 And though they added six days more to it, 
 those could not last for ever. If all had been stu 
 pid and dull, Hester would have thought it lasted 
 for ever. But it was all light with kindness and 
 love and new joy of spring, and new surprises of 
 life unheard of by these Northern birds of pas 
 sage. For Hester there was now a note from 
 Fred, now a letter, now a telegram. Now a boat 
 would run up to the levee, and a black man 
 would run down to the landing-place, and find 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 12$ 
 
 there a little parcel for " Miss Sutphen, at Mr. 
 George Le Clerc s Arcadie" and Hester would 
 carry it to her room and return with a blush, 
 with the very volume of Hamerton which she 
 had spoken of to Miss Ferguson, and which they 
 had both forgotten, but which the faithful Fred 
 eric had not forgotten. Ah, me ! how long are 
 men s arms, and how strong, when they are 
 enough in love. 
 
 Such weeks never last for ever ! 
 
 So, when ended, the girls were kindly and ten 
 derly put on the "St. Mary," a funny little 
 stern-wheel boat, which was to go up the Red 
 River. And their lonely life began again but 
 with such a chance to write long letters as per 
 haps the world gives nowhere else as it twirls 
 round. 
 
 There could hardly be a greater contrast in 
 life than the change from the airy comfort of the 
 large bed-rooms in the luxury of Arcadie to these 
 little six-by-six state-rooms of the " St Mary," 
 the snuffy air and the cotton quilts. " Why they 
 were ever called state-rooms," said Effie, "is 
 something I never could find out, for there is 
 less state about them and more Spartan simpli 
 city than in any other place I go into." Still, 
 when she wrote home, after a day s experience 
 
126 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 of the little boat, she said, " Happy is the coun 
 try where the humblest emigrant going to the 
 frontier has as good conveyance as we have. 
 What you call the Law of Selection provides 
 what everybody wants, even if it provide but 
 little more. If there are few luxuries, there is 
 still a good bed, a good table, and no end of kind 
 ness from these black men and black women 
 around us." 
 
 For one generation, at least, no man need 
 teach the black man or the black woman at the 
 South, to be kind to the Northern traveller, 
 be that traveller whom he may ! 
 
 The first day was Sunday. Yes, a quiet 
 preacherless Sunday. The boat toiled on, as if 
 indeed steam-engines were unknown to Moses, 
 and not included in the comforts of the ten com 
 mandments. Yet the girls had their Bibles, 
 and Owen Feltham, and the dear old thumb- 
 worn Fenelon, and Vaughan s " Hours with 
 the Mystics," and Hester had a lovely talk with 
 a nice Norwegian woman who could not speak a 
 word of English, more than Hester could speak 
 a word of Norwegian. But the fair-haired stran 
 ger produced her Norwegian Testament, and 
 Hester had great joy in spelling out the bless 
 ings in the fifth chapter of Matthew, and then 
 
OF A PULLMAN. I2/ 
 
 she showed her the same chapter in her book, in 
 English. 
 
 And there was a piano on the boat, where 
 should one go as civilization advances unless he 
 had a piano with him ! Why, you know it was 
 behind the piano in the house in Kansas the 
 other day that the panther sheltered himself till 
 Mrs. Sloane could get her husband s breech 
 loader, and shoot him ! and then, I suppose, 
 while she was waiting for the men to come home 
 from dinner, and drag out the ugly brute, she sat 
 down and opened the piano and played an adagiQ 
 by Schubert ! So we live, as we face westward, 
 seventeen miles a year, as De Tocqueville says ! 
 
 And Hester was just sitting at the piano after 
 tea, and was wishing she had brought the Ply 
 mouth Collection with her, and was trying one 
 and another bit of old psalmody, when the 
 familiar signal for stopping the boat was heard, 
 and it was announced that they had come to 
 Bayou Sara. 
 
 Bayou Sara ! How they had heard of Bayou 
 Sara in old war days ! Each of them had friends 
 in the army who were at Bayou Sara. Hester s 
 own brother was at Bayou Sara. But who Sara 
 was or what a Bayou was, neither of them knew 
 the more for this. No, Effie Abgar did not 
 
128 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 know, although Hiram Brinkerhoff had cam 
 paigned at and around Bayou Sara, and had told 
 her so. The little bevy of ladies who had assem 
 bled around the piano to listen to Effie s playing, 
 .all adjourned to the guards, to see what might be 
 the adventures of a stopping a little longer than 
 usual. And then for a little they all walked at 
 Bayou Sara. 
 
 In old prosperous times, which means before 
 the war, the landing was the capital of a large 
 and strong planting interest. It is now but a 
 fprsaken landing-place. As they walked, a won 
 derful sunset was going on ; but they did not 
 dare to linger long on shore. As the boat swung 
 off again the stern wheel struck a floating log ; 
 and two of the arms, with the floats upon them, 
 broke off, and floated down the river. This is to 
 say that one sixteenth of the paddling power was 
 gone, and the whole wheel weakened. While our 
 friends were wondering whether this involved 
 practically the end of their Red River voyage, 
 the captain said to the pilot, "We shall put in 
 new side-arms." Some one asked how long it 
 would take to make the repairs. The Captain 
 said, " Oh ! about fifteen minutes." 
 
 In point of fact the boat s carpenter and his 
 men went steadily to work. It was more than 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 1 29 
 
 fifteen minutes, it was an hour, before the boat 
 started again. Then the wheel was as good as 
 new. Never was seen a more prompt and effi 
 cient piece of practical engineering. Allowing 
 for the time in which they removed the wreck, 
 they would have built a new wheel in four or five 
 hours. 
 
 After such an adventure as this, the travellers 
 looked with more respect on this quiet captain, 
 whose place on the boat they would not so well 
 have understood, but for some such exhibition of 
 his power. Their friend, the pilot, was supreme 
 in his department, and the ladies saw most of 
 him. The mate, said to be the most amiable of 
 men personally, appeared at every landing-place 
 as the most vehement, not to say the most pro 
 fane, director of the jolly crew of negroes who 
 took the changing cargo on or off. The clerk 
 evidently had his set of duties, which were not 
 trifles. But if the girls had not seen the captain 
 come to the front in some such trial as this of 
 the demolished wheel, they would not have 
 known what a captain was for. 
 
 A weirdly picturesque sight was the repair of 
 
 the broken wheel. The sunset light failed fast. 
 
 Instantly, almost without orders, one and another 
 
 black man appeared with the long-handled iron 
 
 9 
 
130 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 baskets, filled with blazing "light-wood" and 
 "pine-knots" which make the torches for all 
 night work at the landings. The carpenters hung 
 out over the water, working their wonders by 
 the lurid flashes of these beacons. What amazed 
 Effie and Hester was, that while everybody was 
 in haste, nobody was in a hurry. Nobody scolded 
 and nobody swore. Nobody half-did any thing. 
 When the wheel was finished, it was finished. 
 It was as good a wheel as if it had been made 
 new at a ship-yard. All this gave them far more 
 confidence in their bonny bark and her crew. 
 
 The ladies formed the habit of dressing long 
 enough before breakfast to take a little walk on 
 the deck above the saloon, by way of appetite. 
 The morning haze, over the fresh green of the 
 banks, gave a dreamy interest to the whole 
 scene. They never tired of such mild adventure 
 as a sharp turn in the river, coming back, per 
 haps after three or four miles, to the other side 
 of some narrow neck, where was a cabin or a 
 peculiar tree which they had seen long before, 
 when they passed it on the other side. One 
 morning, as they joined the pilot in his lookout, 
 they mounted to the high throne reserved for 
 visitors, who may look through the glass sides of 
 the house, in every direction. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 131 
 
 "And how far have we come in the night?" 
 asked Effie. The pilot told her ; and, with the 
 science she had already acquired, she expressed 
 her surprise that the run had been so short. 
 
 "The captain told me he should be opposite 
 Nachitoches before this time." 
 
 " But the captain did not tell you, for he did 
 not know, of that snag which we were to run 
 into." This was the good-natured answer of the 
 good-natured pilot. And in an instant he was 
 sorry for it. 
 
 " Snag ! snag ! " screamed Hester and Effie. 
 Neither had confessed to the other, or to any 
 living being else, the terrors which the idea of 
 "snags," whatever snags might be, had inspired. 
 
 Then the pilot expressed his surprise. He 
 would not have told them, but he supposed every 
 body on the boat knew of it. It was between 
 twelve and one that the boat had struck on a 
 snag which was just near enough the water s 
 edge to strike, not projecting far, the pilot 
 thought, so it was not easily seen. 
 
 " Seen ! " screamed Effie, " how should any 
 thing be seen between twelve o clock and one in 
 the night, with such a mist as this on the river." 
 
 " Anyway," said the good-natured pilot, 
 " William did not see it. I was below," he added 
 
132 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 modestly. "Fortunately it did not strike the 
 hull, only the after-guard. Look over the rail when 
 you go down to breakfast, and you will see where 
 it ripped the guard away. We dropped three 
 hogsheads of sugar into the river. That will 
 sweeten their coffee for them." 
 
 "Three of those great hogsheads into that 
 muddy river ! What a shame ! " This was Hes 
 ter s ejaculation. 
 
 But Effie, who had been peering over, said 
 " How far aft was it ? " And when the pilot told 
 her, the ladies both understood that the snag had 
 poked its head up, and the sugar had fallen 
 through, just below the two state-rooms in which 
 they had themselves been sleeping. Only they 
 were such good sailors now that they had not 
 been wakened not much wakened. Yes. They 
 had waked up. And they had heard voices. 
 But each of them had thought it was a landing. 
 And they confessed, each to each, that the com 
 fort of feeling no throb of the engine, and of 
 sleeping as one sleeps at home, had overcome all 
 curiosity. 
 
 And so they had slept, one thin floor from 
 death ! They both went down to breakfast, 
 solemnized, but not sad or unhappy. 
 
 The people who live on those narrow strips of 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 133 
 
 solid land between the upper Red River and the 
 swamps behind it, above Nachitoches and below 
 Shreveport, call it "the garden of the world." 
 A great many other people call a great many 
 other places the garden of the world. Let that 
 be as it may, it is no wonder these people call 
 this so. The strip is not wide. Sometimes it is 
 a few hundred yards, sometimes it is a few miles, 
 between the river and the swamps. But, narrow 
 or wide, it is as fertile as so much land can be. 
 Hardly an inch is wasted in fences. The long 
 plantations were carefully cultivated to the very 
 edge. And the girls unlearned their prejudices 
 as to Southern laziness as they saw the work 
 here. Effie asked a young gentleman whom they 
 took from one plantation to another, how long 
 the cotton planting season was. "Thirteen 
 months in the year," said he laughing. "That 
 is our joke about it. You see the fresh green 
 yonder of this year s crop. These men have not 
 been lazy, but you see the mule is trotting round 
 in the gin-house yon ; the last year s crop is not 
 yet wholly made. This is riot because they have 
 been slack. To leave a part of that work till now 
 may be in this case good farming." 
 
 Effie and Hester both remembered the "Raft" 
 in their old geography days. It was over this 
 
134 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 Raft that poor Will Harrod fared when he was es 
 caping from the Apaches; or were they Caman- 
 ches ? And what is left of the Raft, and what 
 the pilot explained to tKem, did not disappoint 
 them. The history of the Raft can be made out 
 clearly enough by any traveller who passes up 
 the stream. For there were places in the River 
 not as wide as the steamboat was long, so that 
 at those points she could not have turned round. 
 For twenty miles, indeed, the river never seemed 
 three times as wide as at these narrow points. 
 If then, in some age, not long after the last 
 deluge, maybe, in some ebbing freshet, which 
 was bringing down masses of floating trees from 
 above, two or three such trees happened to make 
 what they call a "jam " at such a narrow place ; 
 if for two or three hundred years there happened 
 to be no eager lumbermen, striving by hook and 
 crook, by axe, saw, and crowbar to loosen this 
 " jam," why, of course, every new tree that floated 
 down the river would pile in behind, but never 
 a tree of them all would go down to the Gulf of 
 Mexico. This is just what made the Raft. It 
 piled up more and more, from year to year. It 
 increased perceptibly on its upper end within the 
 memory of the present century. At last it 
 became in many places a bridge where you could 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 135 
 
 walk across. The river would sometimes cut 
 around it, would always flow under it. 
 
 So matters lasted till Uncle Sam, in his might, 
 had leisure to stop and look at the Raft. It was 
 then one hundred and thirty miles long. Uncle 
 Sam sent Colonel Shreve with steamboats and 
 toothpullers, of various kinds, and bade him abate 
 the Raft. This was in 1836. Colonel Shreve 
 did as he was bid, and now the river is open 
 for hundreds not to say thousands of miles above 
 the place where the Raft once closed it to all 
 navigation. 
 
 It is hard to say what were the adventures 
 of the ever-changing panorama, as the ladies 
 watched the shores of the narrow river. Now 
 some young gentleman in the pilot house threw a 
 " Harper s Bazar " ashore to be picked up by the 
 admiring group who watched the boat as it went 
 by. Who was the " she " for whom the " Bazar " 
 was whirled so deftly ? Now it was a mountain 
 of bags of cotton-seed, which would have stag 
 gered the might of Afrites, which the good- 
 natured deck hands had to land under the per 
 suasion of _ the eager mate. Now three little 
 lambs strayed from an intelligent mother in that 
 exquisite park where they were grazing, and 
 stupidly ran down upon the beach, so to call it, 
 
136 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 below the little bluff. How stupid lambs are ! 
 The poor frightened mamma runs along on the 
 crests, but cannot tell them to turn round, and 
 escape the way they came. How stupid sheep 
 are ! Narrower grows the beach and narrower. 
 Will they never, never return to their mother ? 
 At last one makes a bold venture, and scrambles 
 up the bank ! Safe ! Then number two ! Safe 
 also ! But here is number three, stupidest of all, 
 will dear little number three be drowned ? 
 
 Ah no ! The intelligent pilot, equally interested 
 with the ladies, gives one scream from his 
 whistle ; and, in an agony of terror, dear little 
 number three rushes up the bank to the welcome 
 of its mother. 
 
 Dear lamb, there are always friends watching 
 us whom we do not know. And the terror most 
 terrible, may be a friend in disguise ! 
 
 " Effie ! Effie ! wake up, Effie ! we are at 
 Coshatta ? " 
 
 This was Hester s cry to Mrs. Abgar as she took 
 her constitutional and regular siesta after dinner. 
 
 " And what is Coshatta to me, or what am I to 
 Coshatta," said poor sleepy Effie, dazed or dozing 
 as you choose, when she emerged at the outward 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 137 
 
 door of her state-room. Observe, untravelled 
 reader, that each state-room has two doors. You 
 step into the saloon, or out upon the guards, ac 
 cording as you go to dinner or to see a landing. 
 
 "Effie Abgar, I am ashamed of you. You 
 did not know whether Campte" was an Indian 
 mound or a city, and now you do not know what 
 Coshatta is. Yet Coshatta furnishes, let me tell 
 you, every year one four-hundredth part of the 
 cotton of the world. The chances are, therefore, 
 that, as you press your head upon your pillow, 
 one two-hundredth part of the cooling surface, is 
 from these ports of shipment. I am not wholly 
 certain indeed whether you ever heard of Shreve- 
 port, the place of our destination. From that 
 port one-fortieth of the cotton of the world goes 
 in search of its market." 
 
 So the ladies began to take some interest in 
 cotton, and to learn how it was that people ever 
 thought cotton was king. Here they took cotton 
 seed on board to land it there, where was some 
 new plantation. Here was a plantation wholly 
 owned and run by new-made freemen. There 
 was an old plantation on its mettle to adapt 
 itself to the new order. Everywhere was diligent 
 care, and, while the boat was at the landing at 
 least, vigorous labor. 
 
138 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 They went creeping up among the cotton 
 plantations all day, stopping often. They ex 
 pected to get to Shreveport that night, but the 
 fog settled on them so heavily at sundown that 
 the friendly captain had to tie the boat to a tree, 
 and they must spend one more night on board. 
 
 Not so bad, as the friendly captain said, as his 
 mother s experience. She was forty days coming 
 from New Orleans, and only came to the Raft 
 then ! 
 
 So in one last social singing party ended their 
 last day in "the garden of the world." How 
 little they had thought that they should ever feel 
 at home on the Red River ! But there certainly 
 was a homesick feeling about parting from it. 
 Here was nice Mrs. Ritshey and her pretty 
 daughter, here was poor Miss Harnett, who had 
 such a sad limp, but was so patient about it, here 
 was the droll little French bride who could not 
 understand a word of English, though she were 
 Hester s and Effie s fellow countrywoman, born 
 under the American flag, and under that flag to 
 live till she should die. With all of these ladies 
 our travellers had come to be intimate. They had 
 sung together at night; they had copied each 
 other s patterns ; they had borrowed each other s 
 novels ; they had taken each other s advice, and 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 139 
 
 told each other confidential secrets. And now 
 they were to part, and " never, never to see each 
 other any more." 
 
 And here was the nice Norwegian girl who had 
 come to regard Effie and Hester as her guardian 
 angels, and who had now only two hundred miles 
 more to travel before she met her lover, who had 
 travelled a thousand miles to meet her. 
 
 They all met for one last good sing before 
 going. to bed, French songs, Yankee songs, 
 German songs, Texan songs, psalms, and hymns, 
 and spiritual songs, and the Norwegian girl con 
 tributed her 
 
 NORWEGIAN SONG. 
 
 Allegretto. 
 
 
 n ^ | 1st. \l 2nd -=====3rfl=====~ 
 
 dim. 
 
140 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 My lover sailed away, 
 
 Far, far beyond the sea ; 
 But, on the parting day, 
 
 He gave a ring to me ; 
 And he said, " If God should make 
 
 My grave beneath the sea, 
 This ring will snap and break. 
 
 For I ll ne er come back to thee." 
 
 He kissed me and was gone 
 
 Far, far beyond the sea ; 
 And I am left alone . 
 
 For he s not come back to me. 
 I have heard of storm -and wrack, 
 
 But his ring is safe with me ; 
 So I know he will come back 
 
 To the ring he left, and me. 
 
 And with this pretty omen, if any one had 
 understood the Norwegian, the party broke up 
 for ever. 
 
 The next morning early they were at Shreve- 
 
 port. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 party was in no hurry. So Effie and 
 Hester slept till morning, though the boat 
 was at the landing long before. Mrs. Ritshey 
 had gone, and the Harnetts had come, met Miss 
 Harnett, and had taken her away, and only the 
 Norwegian girl and the two friends were left, of 
 all last night s party. There was no Mr. Hay- 
 dock, alas ! and no Mr. Brinkerhoff, as at friendly 
 Louisville. But they were treated with all the 
 honors, the luggage was all ticketed, and they 
 evaded all coachmen, and walked with Lisa to 
 the hotel where she must wait till the hour for 
 her train. 
 
 Then the girls themselves had some hours, 
 and these they lounged away as best they might. 
 A chance to buy india-rubber and gamboge, and 
 court-plaster, and note-paper, and French chalk, 
 and hair-pins, and every thing else to make one 
 comfortable ! Walking out of town for purposes 
 
142 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 of sketching proved not so easy. It had rained 
 heavily in the night, and the red mud of Shreve- 
 port was as tenacious potter s clay mixed in with 
 Upton s glue, when the same has been well made 
 by King. When they first crossed a street, Effie s 
 overshoe was drawn off, as if some underground 
 bull-dog had bitten it. It was only recovered by 
 a resolute double-handed pull by Hester, and 
 " that day they crossed no more " streets. They 
 retired to the station-house, made their sketches 
 there, and with a paint-knife cut off the mud 
 which still clung to the overshoe. 
 
 And then, early in the forenoon, the train. 
 Not yet the Pullman, eager reader! At first 
 only a comfortable airy car but, oh, the luxury 
 of seeing rolling hills and valleys again ! Hardly 
 hills. No, not high hills but woods and slopes 
 a little like home and something not quite flat. 
 So they came to Marshall, and here, after dinner, 
 swept along the imperial "through train," ready 
 to pick up such insignificant loiterers on branches. 
 How ashamed the people who had not been run 
 ning on express time were expected to feel ! 
 
 But they were not ashamed/ Effie gathered 
 up the " Gray s Botany," the Official Guide and 
 the Racine, her shawl-strap, her umbrella, her 
 water-proof and her hand-bag, and with two 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 143 
 
 hands carried them, and at the same moment 
 held up her skirts. Hester picked up her Black s 
 " Phaeton," Effie s sketch-book, her own portfolio, 
 in which, when the train came, she was writing 
 just a line to Mr. Haydock ; she took also her 
 cloak, her india-rubbers which she had not time 
 to put on, and her carpet-bag, in her two hands. 
 A cheerful black boy followed with their other 
 " traps," and so they crossed to the platform of 
 the imperial through train. Here stood a person 
 who seemed not quite a stranger. " Here s your 
 drawing-room car ! Drawing-room car, madam ! " 
 And then he smiled a broader grin than before. 
 Effie gave him her traps and mounted the steps 
 of the Palace, not recognizing. Hester had a 
 moment more to look on him. It was Aurelius, 
 their own porter, who had left Jersey City with 
 them how long ago it seemed! And the 
 Palace it was their own dear Golconda ! 
 
 " Home again, home again, from a foreign shore." 
 
 And they passed directly to " six and seven," 
 and bade Aurelius put their " things " there, and 
 sank into their old seats, after all their strange 
 and eventful wanderings, with a delight which 
 none can know but monarchs who have returned 
 to the serene splendors of their own homes. 
 
 Do not ask me how the "Golconda" came 
 
144 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 there. I do not know, nor did Aurelius know. 
 Some hot box on the Iron Mountain Road above 
 had disabled the "Siberia," and the "Golconda" 
 had been substituted. And Aurelius, like the 
 faithful lackeys of all palaces, had gone where his 
 dynasty had gone, and was a Texan to-day as he 
 had been a Jerseyman four days before. 
 
 And in more senses than one Hester and Effie 
 felt at home. The country of Eastern Texas, 
 where they now were, is not the rich and fertile 
 region of which Texas boasts most. But these 
 ladies had seen their fill, for the moment, of fer 
 tile lands. And what pleased them here, was 
 that as one rode, this looked like the woodlands 
 of Eastern Massachusetts, or of unmountainous 
 Rhode Island. Of course the flora differs, but a 
 pine is a pine, and though the skilful Hester knew 
 and the keen-sighted Effte perceived that these 
 pines were not their pines, still they were glad 
 that they were pines at all. There were rolling 
 hills, and railroad cuts enough to keep up the 
 general resemblance. 
 
 It was no such country that the torrent of emi 
 grants had come to see, and they were sweeping 
 on further. The existence of the Palace car in 
 such regions makes all other cars "second-class" 
 and a wild enough look, unkempt and untidy 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 145 
 
 have the body of passengers in them. They 
 have slept in these seats, perhaps they have 
 eaten in them, and have drank in them, and have 
 made in them such toilets as they make. And 
 they are of every country that emerged from 
 Babel. Chinaman, black man, red man, Hun 
 garian, Austrian, Prussian, Frenchman, Spaniard, 
 Englishman, Scotchman, Welshman and Irish 
 man, Jews and Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, 
 might all meet in one of these emigrant trains. 
 The ladies would visit them sometimes to carry an 
 orange or a banana to some of the tired children. 
 And they were learning, all the time, how true it 
 is that their own country is one out of many. 
 
 It will never do to try to follow along their 
 diaries, with their vain and vague attempts to 
 sleep off wheels at night, that as they rode they 
 might see spring-time, the first real spring-time 
 they had ever seen, in beautiful Texas, where, if 
 anywhere, spring is spring. The trouble of all 
 such steps, in the Western system of travel, is 
 this. There is but one fast train a day. That is, 
 there is but one "lightning express." What is 
 called a "fast train" on the schedule, may, very 
 probably, be the slowest train of all. If then, 
 you leave the lightning express at iih. 55 to 
 day, it will be to take it again at iih. 56 to- 
 
 10 
 
146 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 morrow, or any subsequent day for the next year 
 that you may choose. If you take another train, 
 at another hour, it is, most likely, only to be over 
 taken by the lightning train before twenty-four 
 hours have gone. And you must sacrifice your 
 Palace if you cease to ride,on the lightning. 
 
 For all that, and for all that, the two travellers 
 did alight at Hearne. Do you remember in the 
 old geographies "Arctic Ocean, seen by Mr. 
 Hearne ? " He must have been another Hearne 
 than this Hearne. This unknown Hearne has 
 given his name to a place where the H. & T. C. 
 crosses the I. and G. N. ; and, if you do not know 
 what that means, it is not my fault, but the crime 
 of the teacher who taught you geography. And 
 here, on a level prairie, is a station-house, which 
 is what people there call a hotel, what in old 
 Yankee times, men would have called a tavern, 
 and there are the other accessories of a junction. 
 
 And here, on a lovely morning, the girls took 
 their lives in their hands, and also took the bot 
 any books, and the sketch-books, and the colors, 
 and walked into the Infinite. You cannot do 
 this long when you start from a beach, because 
 you find the water cold, and you must come back 
 to the Finite. On a prairie you can keep on 
 longer. Fences were left at once. Tracks of 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 147 
 
 cows vanished soon. And then blazes of yellow 
 flowers, flushes of pink flowers, blue streaks of 
 flowers unnamed, all lapped in the eternal emerald 
 green. Not without clumps of trees, oh, ignorant 
 Yankee ! and in such a clump the girls encamped, 
 and took out the paints, and blotched in pink 
 madder, and rose madder, and Naples yellow, and 
 all the yellows, and tried all the greens and 
 purples, and indeed all the colors of the prism, 
 in the hope to carry something home of the glories 
 of a prairie in spring. Such a morning ! Think 
 how they would never have known what they 
 lost had they not spent that morning in Hearne! 
 
 Just a word here for the clean napkins, and 
 bright spoons, and crisp radishes, and thought 
 ful table service of their dinner there ! But we 
 must not stop no, not for dinners or for flowers. 
 On and on, on and on, till we are waked our 
 second morning as a chattering Englishman 
 wakes his wife in 8 and 9, saying that " It s very 
 like a park at home, my dear." 
 
 " I don t want to live here ! " was her wretched 
 groan in reply. 
 
 But perhaps she changed her mind afterwards. 
 
 For Effie and for Hester though half Hes 
 ter s heart was in St. Auguste Austin had a 
 
148 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 thousand charms. No ! nobody could call that 
 hotel a palace, though Austin is the capital of an 
 empire. But the friends who took care of them, 
 the pretty homes, the lovely gardens, the charm 
 ing drives, made them forget the hotel, which in 
 deed, from morning to night, they hardly saw. 
 What fate had bent them to go to San Antonio ? 
 Why not find some quiet lodging here, a little 
 out of the streets of Austin, and nestle down for 
 the spring-time, the sketching, the painting, for 
 the rest which they had been madly pursuing so 
 long ? Just as at Arcadie, it seemed so stupid to 
 go farther. At Austin it seemed as if they had 
 all they asked for when they left home. 
 
 All Austin was crazy about the choice of a 
 United States Senator. Not that anybody seemed 
 to care much about United States politics. But 
 here was an honorable post, for six years, to be 
 given to some one who deserved well of his 
 country. "Ah, Mrs. Abgar," said a gentleman 
 to Effie, " ten years hence you will not have to 
 trouble yourselves who shall be your president. 
 We will choose him for you in Texas ! " 
 
 In truth the population of the Empire of Texas 
 doubles every five years. In 1870, it was eight 
 hundred thousand ; in 1875, they say it was one 
 million six hundred thousand. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 149 
 
 The hotel parlor brought together all the 
 nationalities of the world again, as different 
 people, of rather higher social grade than the 
 girls had seen on the trains, were making their 
 arrangements for new homes. What a reper 
 toire of music that piano repeats as the year 
 goes by! 
 
 Here were the English family, whom the wait 
 ers would call the Member of Parliament ; here 
 were some Italians, from Memphis, strange to 
 say, not from Genoa ; here were gentlemen and 
 ladies from the ends of the earth.- And the scrap 
 which Effie wrote down, her last night in Austin, 
 was not a camp-meeting song, nor a ballad of the 
 Brazos, but a little air of Verdi s. All the same, 
 he who sang was an American born, while he 
 sang in the only language he had ever heard at 
 home. 
 
 con brio, x-* -.,. > ^ -^ >-^ =, leciq. 
 
 
 La donna & mo - bi - le qual piuma al ven - to, 
 
 1 
 
 1 r~ 
 
 mu-ta d ac - cen - to e di - pen - sie - ro. Sempre un a 
 
WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 
 ma-bi-le leggia-dro vi - so, in pianto o in ri - so e men-zo- 
 
 gne - ro La donna e mo - bil qual piuma al ven - to, 
 
 mu - ta d ac-cen-to e di pen - - sier, 
 
 4& 
 
 e di pen - sier, e 
 
 conforza 
 
 e di 
 
 sempre mi-se-ro 
 
 chi a lei s af-fi - da chi le con - fi - - da mal 
 
 canto il 
 
 co - re ! Pur mai non sente - si fe-lice ap - pie - nc 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 chi su quel se - no non liba a mo - re I La donna e 
 
 mo - bil qual piuma al ven - to mu - ta d ac - cen -to 
 
 sier, e 
 
 e di pen - sier. 
 
 Woman is changeable ! 
 Light as a feather, 
 False as fair weather. 
 
 Who can believe her ? 
 Always a beautiful face so beguiling, 
 Weeping or smiling, 
 Yet a deceiver ! 
 
 Woman ah woman ! 
 Light as a feather ! 
 False as fair weather, 
 Who can believe ? 
 
152 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 Oh, it is misery ! 
 Fondly confiding ! 
 Tamely abiding 
 
 Her fickle fancies, 
 Always felicity 
 Mocks the pursuer, 
 Whom as her wooer 
 Love ne er entrances. 
 
 Woman ah woman ! 
 Light as a feather ! 
 False as fair weather, 
 Who can believe ? 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 153 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 "PLEASE to observe that, in distance, from 
 Shreveport to Austin these ladies had 
 travelled about four hundred miles, say as much 
 as the width of France from the Bay of Biscay 
 to Switzerland. But they had not crossed half of, 
 the Empire of Texas, for Texas is an Empire ; 
 and, by the way, be it said, she knows she is. 
 
 Who were these ladies then that they should 
 stay, even in the prettiest garden in Austin, or 
 waste a month on its pleasantest verandah, and 
 go home to confess that they had not gone half 
 across Texas. They must see some Mexicans ! 
 They must know a ranchero by sight ! They 
 must walk and talk Spanish. 
 
 For San Antonio they had started, and to San 
 Antonio they would go. They would show they 
 were not women to be turned about by every 
 word of friendship. 
 " The zeal that drove them from their native home 
 
 Shall drive them gadding round the world to roam. " 
 
 said the wretched Effie, parodying Dryden, as 
 
154 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 she packed a pot of sensitive plants in a safe 
 place among her spring bonnets and laces in the 
 agony of the late Sunday night before they 
 started across the prairies. That kind Judge 
 Treadwell who had done every thing for them so 
 carefully had engaged an ambulance and a driver 
 who was to take them to San Antonio. " If the 
 man were my own brother, Mrs. Abgar, I could 
 not trust him more implicitly than I trust Dustin. 
 I have sent Mrs. Treadwell and the children with 
 him over the prairies a hundred times. I do so 
 wish I could go with you ! " So they were really 
 to go in " an ambulance." 
 
 " Any thing, my dear Effie," said Hester, " so 
 it be not a stage-coach." 
 
 For since Hester s wretched failure in taking 
 care of herself on this great party, she had sub 
 sided ignominiously, and she was no longer the 
 chief of the expedition. Effie made all the 
 arrangements now. The pretence that either 
 knew an inch of the geography had been long 
 since abandoned. 
 
 At half -past seven an eager waiter at Hester s 
 door announced that the " ambyourlance " had 
 come. Hester flung the door open, bade him 
 strap her trunk and take it down, gathered i, 2, 
 3, 4, and took them herself, fairly ashamed of her 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 155 
 
 own eagerness to see what manner of machine an 
 ambulance might be. 
 
 She found simply a long canvas-topped wagon, 
 lightly sprung such as she had ridden in, on the 
 White Mountains, twenty times, and had never 
 heard called an ambulance before. There were 
 but two seats in it, where there might have been 
 three ; but, as the party was so small, the middle 
 seat had been taken away to make the more room 
 for the luggage. Half amused and half provoked 
 with herself, she turned to meet Effie and see if 
 she would confess to any surprise. 
 
 " Is this an ambulance ? I supposed there 
 would be a bed in it, .and that I should lie in it all 
 day, and you sit by my side in the costume 
 of Florence Nightingale to feed me with pare 
 goric." 
 
 A little crest-fallen, they hurried through the 
 last breakfast at Austin, and then, to the relief 
 of the good-natured Dustin, the tall Pennsyl- 
 vanian to whose escort they were entrusted, they 
 mounted their chariot and were away. 
 
 A lovely morning ! " Why, it is really May-day, 
 Hester, of all the days in the year ! " The air 
 fresh and even bracing, the sun just clouded 
 without the slightest risk of rain. Dust laid; who 
 shall say how ? since no rain had fallen for weeks. 
 
156 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 Light hearts, light freight, a cheerful driver, and 
 a good team, who could ask for a better way to 
 spend May-day ? 
 
 Effie s first chance for a sketch and that only 
 the barest suggestion of values and of groups 
 was as you leave the city at the ford of the Colo 
 rado. When the river chooses to rise, and no 
 body knows when that will be, it is twenty-three 
 hundred feet wide. On this May-day it was per 
 haps sixty yards across. The horses were to be 
 watered before crossing it, and at that moment a 
 drove of beautiful cattle, a drove to fill Rosa Bon- 
 heur, nay Juno herself, with rapture, chose to file 
 across the river at just middle distance from 
 them, so prettily grouped, and the varied figures 
 standing out so well against the water and the 
 distant sky-line ! Then the ambulance was to 
 ford as soon as the " stage " had gone by. Neither 
 of the girls had ever forded a river. At the bot 
 tom of each heart was sober certainty that they 
 should be swept into the Gulf of Mexico. But 
 each was ashamed to tell the other, and as in 
 truth there was no danger nor shadow of danger, 
 they could enjoy the wonderful picture all the 
 way. A hard pull across the dry river-bed and 
 then began the wonders of eighty miles drive 
 through a park of matchless beauty. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 157 
 
 Yes, everybody says "An English park!" like 
 the sturdy Englishman to his berth-dozed wife 
 in the Pullman. High praise, to our English 
 friends. Twenty years ago Robin said of these 
 prairies, "Like a park;" good Mr. Flint keeps 
 saying, " You would think you were in a park." 
 That clever English woman, thirty years after, 
 says "It is all like a park." And as the girls 
 dipped into Mr. Olmsted s Texas from time to 
 time they could not but ask whether inspirations 
 from these Texan parks had not stolen since into 
 the masterpieces of his success. 
 
 The road was perfect. It would not have been 
 so after rain. But now the most sensitive critic, 
 could not ask any thing better. Sometimes it was 
 fenced in, much more often not. Almost never 
 was it exactly level, not once so steep but that 
 the horses kept the even tenor of their trot. 
 
 "Oh, Effie! look here." "Hester, do look 
 there." " See that distance ; would you not be 
 certain it was the sea ? " " Was ever any thing 
 grouped like those trees ? " " Had you any idea 
 that a prairie was so beautiful ?" "Do you sup 
 pose this is a bona fide prairie ? there are so many 
 trees." And so on, and so on. 
 
 And then the flowers ! May-day indeed. Hes 
 ter had been in Switzerland at the end of June, 
 
158 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 years on years before, and often had she raptured 
 to Effie about the day s ride, in which they col 
 lected a hundred varieties of flowers, most of 
 them new to them. Here was the same experi 
 ence in a new form. And these were not horrid 
 coarse things, as people say prairie flowers are. 
 Any one of the succession of the nosegays which 
 Tom Dustin gathered for them, or which for 
 themselves the girls gathered in one or another 
 irrepressible escape from the carriage, would 
 have been a beauty and a joy in any competition 
 with any collection. Mistress botanist Hester, 
 prime botanist extraordinary to the expedition, 
 was beside herself for names, and the well-bat 
 tered " Gray " lying in the bottom of the wagon 
 proved of more use to press things in, which 
 were to be sent home to Letitia to soak out in 
 water and analyze, than for a guide in nomencla 
 ture. The "Gray" stood bold to its determina 
 tion to pass no limit "south of Kentucky and 
 Virginia." 
 
 "He won t pass it," said Effie, proudly, "but 
 we have." 
 
 This list may well be compared with the lists 
 of Swiss travel. Dividing by old Ransom s floral 
 system, in which there were nine classes of 
 flowers based on the several tints of the rainbow, 
 there were, to use his language : 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 159 
 
 1. "Them as bears the white blossom." In 
 this class was the original Eupatorium of Ran 
 som, and two or three other varieties ! Be it 
 said to the unlearned that when a botanical 
 writer wants to say he has seen a thing himself, 
 he marks it with the mark of exclamation (!), and 
 when he doubts the remark of another he ap 
 pends an interrogation (?). The girls, as they 
 made their list, when Dustin was watering or at 
 other writing spots, delighted in the immense 
 ejaculations which lighted it up. 
 
 It went on. 
 
 2. " Them as bears the violet blossom." 
 
 " Is magenta violet ? " " No, child, magenta is 
 red. Are you color blind ? " " Then I shall put 
 in purple lupine and false lupine here." "Put in 
 what you choose. You already see the radical 
 error of Ransom s system." But down went the 
 two lupines with two marks of wonder ! ! And 
 purple verbenas, of which there were acres on 
 acres of color, had to come in here. 
 
 3. " Them as bears the indigo blossom." 
 Hester was blank here. She had only two or 
 
 three vile hyssops which she could have gathered 
 in any barnyard. But when they came to 
 
 4. " Them as bears the blue blossom," she put 
 down lupines and blue verbenas. " What is that 
 
160 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 about that Horticultural Society which offered a 
 prize for blue verbenas ? Was it all humbug ; or 
 why did not somebody come here and win the 
 sordid dross ? Here I must put in many sur 
 prise marks to show my scorn of the older ob 
 server." 
 
 But these things were only preliminary. " Blue 
 flowers ? " said Hester, " I always distrusted blue 
 flowers. My verbenas at home always had. a 
 passion for running into the class of purples, 
 though I never got the prize." It was not till she 
 came to her reds that she ran rampant. 
 
 This magenta blossom which she wanted to 
 put in first, which the maidens of the region call 
 "wild Hollyhock," the painted cup only red 
 reminiscence of New England the Star of 
 Texas, an exquisitely cut flower of very delicate 
 pink, these were alone enough to give dignity to 
 class No. 5 of the Ransomic system. So different 
 from lands where the ruling color is yellow on 
 grass ! 
 
 But, when the girls had come to " Class No. 5," 
 their classification ended in their first reasonable 
 access of terror. 
 
 Judge Treadwell had not told them that, ten 
 days before, the mail-coach had been attacked by 
 highwaymen, and all their watches and money 
 taken from the passengers. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 But this was really the reason why he had en 
 trusted them to Dustin and an ambulance. The 
 "private team" is safer because nobody knows it 
 is coming. 
 
 Erne had seen on a hand-bill in the post-office 
 offering a "REWARD" that the mail had been 
 robbed. But she had not mentioned it to Hester. 
 Hester had seen the same " Reward " offered 
 in a Galveston newspaper. But she had not 
 shown it to Effie, and had torn the paper to bits 
 lest she should see it. 
 
 Dustin was no more anxious about the matter 
 than he was at the danger of a thunderbolt 
 because he had heard of thunderbolts. But he 
 had too much sense to speak of it to the ladies. 
 
 All the same, however, when, as he gathered 
 up his reins after watering the horses, looking 
 back on the Eastern horizon, he saw two men, 
 perhaps two miles away, pressing their horses 
 towards him on a hard gallop, Dustin stepped 
 back into the ambulance rather too hastily. And 
 he gave the horses rather an untimely and un 
 gracious cut. For Dustin meant to push them 
 beyond the strip of wood-land which they were 
 entering before these horsemen overhauled him. 
 It was in this very strip of wood-land that the 
 mail had been overhauled. 
 
1 62 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 The sun was now setting, as far as ever in ad 
 vance of them, though they had travelled towards 
 him so long. 
 
 The accent of Dustin s cry to his team was 
 unfortunate. 
 
 Hester, more nervous than usual, perhaps, 
 caught the alarm. She had noticed his look back 
 and the sudden change of his manner. She 
 thrust her body out of the carriage, looked back, 
 and saw the horsemen against the eastern sky. 
 
 " It is the robbers ! It is the robbers ! " she 
 sobbed, as she fell back. 
 
 And Dustin did not say her no. But he "cut" 
 the horses again with that same merciless lash 
 which the ladies had never seen before. 
 
 Effie Abgar thrust her body out on her side. 
 She saw the two horsemen also. 
 
 She said no word. But she detached her 
 watch and chain, she wrapped them in her hand 
 kerchief with her purse, and she crowded the 
 whole into the bottom of the bag of corn which 
 Dustin had for his horses. She bade Hester do 
 the same with hers. 
 
 A stern chase is a long chase. And the two 
 bays understood what was expected. The road 
 was rougher in that thicket than in the open 
 prairie. But the ambulance held together, even 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 163 
 
 though it sprang wildly from side to side, and 
 sometimes toppled fearfully as if it would go 
 over. 
 
 Dustin only spoke to his " cattle." And the 
 girls said no word to each other or to him. 
 
 But they knew what he thought the exigency 
 when they saw the horses break into that wild 
 run from the quick trot before, unchecked by 
 him. 
 
 Up a little slope round a curve in the timber. 
 Then Dustin spoke, 
 
 " When we have rounded yon oak, mum, we 
 shall be in sight of Tremlett s, and all s well." 
 
 But yon oak was fearfully far away ! They had 
 not reached it, no, nor half reached it, when they 
 could hear horses hoofs behind them. 
 
 Then they could hear voices, " Hold up ! Hold 
 up ! Tom Dustin, hold up ! " 
 
 But Tom Dustin this time really swore at his 
 horses, though he had never been known to be 
 profane before, and cut more unmercifully than 
 ever. 
 
 "Rat, tat, tat: rat, tat, tat" how fearfully 
 near the hoofs came ! 
 
 And at last, though the road was narrow, a 
 white horse dashed by them. 
 
 " Will you hold up, I say ? " 
 
164. WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 I 
 
 N all narratives of adventure, there is, at the 
 crisis, one satisfaction for the reader ; viz., 
 that he can judge by the mere number of pages 
 between him and the end of the book, whether 
 there be any thing more to tell. Whether a given 
 earthquake engulfed all the persons of whom 
 the book has treated, or only one half of them, or 
 possibly only one quarter, may be roughly deter 
 mined by the rule of three. And thus, most 
 skilful readers are aware, that in the real tug and 
 throe of a book, when the " Alert " is pinched hard 
 est in the floe ; or when nineteen lions, with mouths 
 open, are ranged in a circle around Captain Cum- 
 ming and his two discouraged naked Mnoongsa 
 guides, most readers, I say, are aware, that to 
 themselves, " about one quarter of this book is 
 yet unread, therefore about one quarter of the 
 people in it still live." To persons who begin at 
 the last chapter, and read backward, this calcula 
 tion is unnecessary. But their system is so 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 165 
 
 destructive, so injurious to all effects, whether of 
 poetical justice as wrought out in nature and in 
 fact, or of the deftly devised plot even of the most 
 skilful novelist, that it is justly condemned in all 
 courts of literary justice, where authors are the 
 arbiters. The true formula, as has been said, for 
 discovering the exact annihilating power of any 
 earthquake, epidemic, hari-kari, rise of a tidal 
 wave, undrained village street, collision of trains, 
 or, as in our little book, an attack of banditti, 
 will be found in the following equation : 
 
 P 
 
 Where # represents the number of survivors 
 after the crisis, c the whole number of characters, 
 / the number of pages read, and n the number 
 of pages in all. 
 
 It is only when Messrs. Longman or Messrs. 
 Roberts pad the end of the book with thick ad 
 vertising sheets, that the average reader is misled 
 by this formula. And this custom is so annoy 
 ing, that in Sybaris, and in the Young Com 
 panions Country, the custom of Utopia is still 
 maintained, where, by statute, publishers were 
 compelled to put the advertising sheets at the 
 beginning of the volume. 
 
 In the case of the little adventure with which 
 
1 66 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 our last chapter closed, the purposes of melo 
 drama would have been better accomplished had 
 the brigands succeeded in rifling the purses of 
 the ladies and taking their watches. In very 
 fact, only ten days before, two men on this 
 same road, took nine watches from nine stage- 
 travellers, two of whom were officers in the 
 United States army ; and, about ten days after, 
 a similar event took place on the Southern road 
 to San Antonio. If, at that point, Fred Hay- 
 dock and Mr. Hiram Brinkerhoff had started 
 out from a thicket, had killed two banditti with 
 revolvers, and slain two by the edge of the sword, 
 escaping themselves miraculously with only a 
 slight flesh-wound in Fred Haydock s left arm, 
 which Hester herself were permitted to band 
 age, this little story would have had just the 
 element of romance which, alas, it has not ; and 
 these remaining pages would have had just 
 enough of blood, of arnica, and of the Extract of 
 Hamamelis to give them interest in the eyes of 
 the general reader. 
 
 But, really, this was not what happened. So 
 soon as Dustin saw the white horse pass him, he 
 knew the game was up. He sulkily drew up his 
 own beasts, and even swore at them because 
 they did not stop as sharply as he wished them 
 to do. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 167 
 
 The other rider, on a bay horse speckled with 
 the frothing of his own running, passed on the 
 other side. 
 
 The two girls sat back in the ambulance with 
 no feeling of terror now. Effie was conscious of 
 the simple feeling of amusement, and Hester s 
 was crude curiosity. " What would happen 
 next ? " 
 
 What happened was, that the bay horse was 
 checked most easily, and his rider turned him. 
 
 It was Hiram Brinkerhoff who said, " I hope 
 we did not frighten you." And then as he saw 
 that the party had been frightened, he was abject 
 and eager in his mortified apologies. But really 
 the young men were not so much to blame. 
 They had arrived in Austin only that morning. 
 All their time there was spent in tracing the 
 ladies, and they had been on one or two false 
 trails. They had known nothing of mail rob 
 bers, and were both of them, sooth to say, so 
 ignorant of Texas and its customs that they 
 thought of such things as little as they would 
 have done in East Orange or in North New 
 Milan. As they dashed after the ambulance they 
 were only afraid that some drunken driver had 
 these two ladies in his care. 
 
 Poor Tom Dustin ! 
 
168 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 No, Lily ! No, Emma ! The measurement of the 
 Town and Country series is pitiless, is remorse 
 less. There must be no space wasted in these 
 pages on what Fred Haydock did or did not say 
 to the two ladies as he walked by the side of the 
 carriage, while his horse followed meekly, and 
 the cortege went down to Tremlett s. For of 
 course with Hiram Brinkerhorf was Fred Hay- 
 dock. Of course the one had seen his corre 
 spondents in New Orleans, in Baton Rouge, in 
 Nachitoches, and had then hurried to Austin to 
 meet his appointment with Fred. Of course the 
 other had wound up all the government business 
 in St. Auguste, and had hurried by Galveston to 
 Austin to meet his appointment with Hiram. 
 Hester Sutphen had unfortunately missed the 
 telegram which begged her to wait till they 
 came. So was it that while the girls going out 
 from Austin were fording the Colorado, the two 
 gentlemen were entering Austin in seats six and 
 seven of the " Golconda." 
 
 Then, as has been said, they were on a false 
 trail at first. None the less did they mount 
 themselves well at Austin and went in pursuit, 
 with what fatal success the reader has seen. 
 
 The ladies were forgiving, more forgiving 
 perhaps than the gentleftien deserved. With 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 169 
 
 much laughter the watches were disinterred 
 from the bags of corn. On a sober walk all the 
 steeds came up to Tremlett s. The people at 
 Tremlett s were amazed to see Tom Dustin s 
 team come in, in such a lather. But their curi 
 osity was not appeased at first, and the young 
 ladies were at once received, in the simple kind 
 ness of the hospitality of a wayside inn in Texas, 
 to the cold water and other refreshment which 
 should restore them from the terrors of the last 
 hurried mile. 
 
 In the "gallery" hung a pail of water, because 
 in a country where ice is unknown in May, the 
 best chances for keeping water cool come, by 
 maintaining for it a steady evaporation on every 
 side. The gentlemen dipped from the pail, and 
 made their ablutions there. Hiram even had a 
 chance to open his ready sketch-book, and by 
 one or two tints to give some of the effects of 
 the sunset, when they were all summoned to 
 gether to supper. 
 
 They found that they were not the only trav 
 ellers. From one and another point different 
 people assembled, and it proved that an extra 
 stage had " put up " for the night, and that some 
 wayfarers "in pursuit of lost horses were here. 
 The meal was served in a rough ell behind the 
 
1 70 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 house ; and the several guests some in their 
 shirt sleeves, some in more full costume gath 
 ered silently at the long table. 
 
 No one spoke. And, in a moment, the reason 
 was apparent, as Tremlett, the innkeeper, at the 
 head of the board bowed, and in simple language 
 asked a blessing. 
 
 "Talk about godless Texas," said Hiram, 
 afterwards, as he and Fred went to look after 
 their horses cheer. " It is the only region where 
 I have ever travelled, where an inn-keeper asks 
 a blessing, before his guests fall to." 
 
 A beautiful moon had come up while they were 
 at supper. The air was clear as in a winter 
 night in New England. The ladies sat a little 
 while on the gallery, but then owned they were 
 tired, and bade good-night, led away under Mrs. 
 Tremlett s watchful care to see what manner of 
 contrivances Mrs. Tremlett s beds might be. 
 As the good lady lighted her " dip," she turned 
 kindly to Hester, and said, inquiringly : 
 
 " You re from the East, my dear ? " 
 
 Hester said she was. 
 
 " From Chicago ? " continued Mrs. Tremlett. 
 
 "Oh! farther than Chicago," said Hester, 
 laughing. 
 
 " From New York ? " 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 " Oh ! farther than New York. I am from 
 Boston ! " 
 
 " From Boston, be you," said the good lady, 
 indeed surprised. " Then you speak French ! " 
 And so the mystery of Hester s and Effie s bad 
 English and foreign accent were accounted for. 
 This was not the only time in Texas when they 
 found that their beloved " hub of the universe " 
 was rated as in a foreign land. 
 
 Meanwhile, on the "gallery" gathered the 
 different men-folk, travellers, or of the house 
 hold, and as the number became too many for 
 the chairs, one and another threw himself on the 
 ground in front, basking, so to speak, in the full 
 light of the good-natured moon. 
 
 " In my country," said Hiram, " I should hardly 
 dare to sit out in the evening air, as we are sit 
 ting now, though it were the middle of August. 
 And this is only the first day of May." 
 
 One of the young Texans replied that there 
 had not been five nights since New-year when 
 he would not willingly have slept on the ground 
 there, wrapped in a blanket, so little risk was 
 there from the dews. 
 
 "No dews, and no rain," said Hiram, "then 
 what is it which keeps the prairies green ? " 
 
 But this was what no one could well tell. 
 
172 
 
 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 They said it was three months since there had 
 been any rain-fall of consequence. Indeed, they 
 said their springs were low and their crops 
 suffering. Yet, as the travellers had seen, the 
 prairies were as green as a mowing lot in 
 Massachusetts would be a month later in the 
 year. 
 
 All that anybody could say was, that the roots 
 of the prairie grass were very long. This mes- 
 quit grass, for instance, which is such a blessing 
 to man and beast, throws down its root three feet 
 below the surface. 
 
 And then, in the midst of this geoponic lore, 
 a long wagon drove by, with extemporized seats 
 for eight or ten people, and they sang as they 
 rode. 
 
 No - bod-y knows the trouble I ve had, No-bod-y knows but 
 
 c r r 
 
 Je - sus. No- 
 
 bod-y knows the trou-ble I ve had, 
 
 
 Glo - ry, hal - le - lu ! 
 
 I felt the bur - den of 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 1/3 
 
 H-H-r rrr r ^f rrr lXI 
 
 dead - ly sin, Oh, yes, Lord! He opened his door and. he 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 let me 
 
 Oh, 
 
 Lord! 
 
 " They are going home from the camp-meeting 
 at the corners," said Tremlett in explanation. 
 One and another of the singers waved a hand as 
 they went by. But the carriage did not stop. As 
 it receded upon the prairie, successive verses of 
 the song could be heard, less and less distinct, 
 as the distance increased. 
 
 Nobody knows the trouble I ve had, 
 
 Nobody knows but Jesus. 
 
 Nobody knows the trouble I ve had, 
 
 Glory, hallelu ! 
 
 I fell on the ground and I kissed his feet, Oh, yes, Lord ! 
 
 And he lifted me up with his smile so sweet, Oh, yes, Lord ! 
 
 Nobody knows the trouble I ve had, 
 
 Nobody knows but Jesus. 
 
 Nobody knows the trouble I ve had, 
 
 Glory, hallelu ! 
 
 I took his hand and I held it fast, Oh, yes, Lord ! 
 
 And I will hold it to the last, Oh, yes, Lord ! 
 
 Nobody knows the trouble I ve had, 
 Nobody knows but Jesus. 
 Nobody knows the trouble I ve had, 
 Glory, hallelu ! 
 
174 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 I took his crown when his temples bled, Oh, yes, Lord ! 
 For I heard the gracious words he said, Oh, yes, Lord ! 
 
 Nobody knows the trouble I ve had, 
 
 Nobody knows but Jesus. 
 
 Nobody knows the trouble I ve had, 
 
 Glory, hallelu ! 
 
 Oh, take my burden, and bear my yoke, Oh, yes, Lord ! 
 
 These were the gracious words he spoke, Oh, yes, Lord ! 
 
 And, after this, it was impossible to follow the 
 verses. 
 
 The young gentlemen took the song as a con 
 secration of to-night, and broke up the little bi 
 vouac to try the comforts, hardly so attractive, of 
 Mrs. Tremlett s bedrooms. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 morning came, it proved that a 
 "Norther" had struck them in the 
 night. But it was a very gentle " Norther " 
 compared with what they had all read about in 
 Mr. Olmsted s book, and in the adventures of 
 Phil Nolan s friends, which, just at this moment 
 was working along in Scribner s Magazine. All 
 the hurt it had done anybody was, that every 
 body had wakened at four o clock, and had pulled 
 up his bedquilt. Blankets appeared to be un 
 known at the Tremlett s. But, in a cotton-grow 
 ing country, quilts are quite as thick as any 
 traveller will require. 
 
 When breakfast was ended, and the ambu 
 lance came round, it proved that Fred Haydock 
 had bought a side-saddle from Tremlett ; that 
 Fred s own saddle was fastened behind the am 
 bulance. So Hester very prettily yielded to 
 Fred s eager request that for the first hour she 
 would ride on horseback with him. 
 
176 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 Was not it kind in Hiram Brinkerhoff to let 
 her take his horse, while he jolted in the am 
 bulance ? 
 
 And Fred and Hester were able to go back to 
 that first ride, so long ago, in the darkness of 
 Arcadie ! 
 
 Then, after an hour, they took the ambulance 
 and Effie and Hiram rode in their turn. Just as 
 they mounted, Dustin pointed to the southwest 
 ern horizon. 
 
 " A drove of cattle, Mrs. Abgar." 
 
 And over the slope, three or four miles away, 
 Effie made out a long line of ants creeping in 
 line of battle. 
 
 But in half an hour the travellers had neared 
 the ants and the ants the travellers. The ants 
 were an army, half a mile from flank to flank, of 
 beautiful cattle. Oh, how Juno, or Minerva, or 
 Aphrodite would have quarrelled for those white 
 ones ! Black, white, red, brown, gray, mauve, 
 ashes of roses, salmon color, pink, mottled and 
 pied no two oxen alike but all with a look 
 not so strange, both of gentleness and vigor. 
 They plodded amiably along ; they cropped the 
 grass as if they had been pet lambs, or, if they 
 had loitered too long, they galloped when they 
 were touched up by impatient drivers. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 177 
 
 The drivers wild bandit-looking men, with 
 Mexican hats, and queer buckskin leggings 
 rode from end to end of the troop, almost at 
 right angles with its line of march to be sure 
 that no ox strayed behind. And so, in solemn 
 procession, the twenty hecatombs of oxen were 
 to march a thousand miles, from day to day, till 
 they should ascend, not a sacrificial altar, but 
 the trains of cars which should .bear them to 
 distant Brighton. 
 
 " You might tie a letter for your husband on 
 the horn of that lovely white one, and he might 
 find it at his butcher s, if he were romantic 
 enough to ask for Texan beef." 
 
 So said Hiram Brinkerhoff, laughing. But 
 even in the motion of the horses he could see 
 that Mrs. Abgar started. What had he said ? 
 
 She asked him, coldly was it? or with 
 what tone ? 
 
 " I do not understand you." 
 " I say," said Hiram, red in the face, "that you 
 could make the cattle your mail-carriers to your 
 husband to Mr. Abgar." 
 
 " Why, Mr. Brinkerhoff, I beg your pardon ; it 
 is all over now, but you surprised me. My hus 
 band has been in heaven many years. I never 
 had a husband but for one happy month. Peo- 
 
 12 
 
WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 pie say it was too happy, but I do not think so." 
 And she smiled with that beautiful sad smile. 
 
 Hiram Brinkerhoff was still crimsoned. " Dear 
 Mrs. Abgar, pardon me. You know ! I am sure 
 you know I would not have pained you. But ! 
 Well ! You do not see ! But you have spoken 
 so much of Mr. Abgar, of Phil, you call him I 
 supposed Mr. Haydock supposed " 
 
 " Dear old Phil ! yes," said Mrs. Abgar^ her 
 face not losing its sweetness. "Where should 
 I have been but for him ? He is my husband s 
 older brother. But dear old Phil has a very 
 charming wife of his own, and such lovely chil 
 dren ! I thought I showed you their pictures." 
 
 Yes, she had showed their pictures, and had 
 said they were her nephews and nieces, but she 
 had not said that they were Phil s children. 
 
 It was queer: they could not justify it to 
 themselves, nor in any way explain it. But there 
 is no doubt that after this contretemps and ex 
 planation neither of the two cared to go on with 
 the other, just then, in just the easy and confi 
 dential way in which they had ridden before. As 
 soon as Mrs. Abgar s hour was ended she said 
 she was a little tired, and she resumed her seat 
 in the ambulance. Fred s horse was fastened 
 behind, and Fred took the vacant seat by Dustin. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 179 
 
 But Hiram Brinkerhoff did not propose to drive 
 in Dustin s place, as he might have done, and 
 they kept on, a broken party, till they came to 
 Braunfels. 
 
 Dustin at one moment pointed forward with 
 his whip to a great yellow square patch of who 
 should say how many acres ? on a distant swell. 
 
 " Have they such wheat as that in your coun 
 try, Mrs. Abgar ? " 
 
 Effie liked to hear him talk about the wonders 
 of Texas. 
 
 " No, indeed," said she. " We have no wheat 
 in my country. But, Mr. Dustin, not even in 
 Texas, I think, is wheat as yellow as that on the 
 second day of May." 
 
 " Sure enough, mum, sure enough ! It must 
 be flowers, mum ! " 
 
 And so it proved, when, after an hour s riding, 
 they passed through this yellow patch, and found 
 themselves surrounded by forty acres of coreopsis 
 in full bloom ! 
 
 But Dustin had his revenge upon Effie, as she 
 was frank enough to confess to him. She had 
 made a sketch, involving one of these sweeps of 
 tremendous distance, and she had written in on 
 it for use, if she could ever put it in color, across 
 a little bit of her middle distance, "little pond 
 
I So WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 quite as blue as sky." When they rode on and 
 passed through the "pond" it proved to be a 
 giant s patch of blue verbenas ! 
 
 The exquisite, clear spring of the San Marcos 
 River is a natural curiosity which all travellers 
 must stop to wonder at. San Marcos itself was 
 a wonder to them, because it was their first town 
 after they had left Austin. Then Braunfels with 
 its quaint German look, mixed in with southern 
 traits, and unmistakable Americanisms, would 
 have been an interesting place to stay in. But, 
 no ! they held on to their journey s end this time; 
 and at last, when they were well tired, they came 
 to the point where Will Harrod bade good-by to 
 Inez Perry, and so through fresh mesquit trees 
 dashed on till they saw all the crosses and spires 
 of San Antonio. Does any one, .by good luck, 
 know who Will Harrod and Inez Perry were ? 
 
 And in San Antonio they found all that they 
 had come for. First of all, in the Menger House, 
 so neat and comfortable a home. Then, when 
 they had washed and rested, such a funny walk, 
 where no one knew an inch of the way. Wher 
 ever they went they came to the river, and a 
 river "as is a river," so active, so deep, so 
 green, so satisfactory every way. " What funny 
 little bathing houses ! can people bathe in May ? " 
 
OF A PULLMAN. l8l 
 
 It seemed as if every garden ran to the river and 
 as if everybody had a bathing house in his gar 
 den of his own. 
 
 None of them had ever been in Spain. But 
 they supposed, and were perhaps right, that San 
 Antonio looked like a little city in Spain, with 
 these narrow streets sometimes made to give 
 shade in summer, and with these white walls 
 almost windowless, which make the sides of the 
 streets. 
 
 Yet sometimes they came to a distinctive Swiss 
 cottage, and sometimes it was the legitimate 
 Southern house with its broad gallery. Still 
 Spain preponderated. And the Spanish talk in 
 the streets preponderated over the German and 
 the English. And when the four stood in either 
 of the" squares, the Military Plaza, or the Cathe 
 dral Plaza, or the Alamo Plaza, it was impossible 
 to believe they were in their own land. 
 
 A lovely sunset and a short evening before 
 sweet sleep avenged and rubbed away the fa 
 tigue of eighty miles drive across the prairies. 
 
1 82 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 HPHE ladies slept in the same room. In the 
 confidences of the toilet, night and morning, 
 Hester told Effie, yes, of fifty things which she 
 and Fred had agreed upon in the long talks of 
 the day and evening before. But Effie she 
 did not know why, though she made up her 
 mind to it two or three times did not tell 
 Hester of the mistake of Mr. Brinkerhoff and of 
 her discovery of it, and of the foolish way in 
 which for the moment it had disturbed her. Mrs. 
 Abgar did not need to take the trouble, for, the 
 night before, Fred Haydock had told Hester 
 Sutphen the whole of it. And Hester could not 
 conceive how or why the two men should have 
 been mistaken. 
 
 There had been some hitch about the expected 
 letters the night before. But at breakfast the 
 hitch was loosened, and the great stack of letters 
 came in. To the gentlemen, not so many. To 
 the ladies, galore. And over cooling mutton- 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 183 
 
 chops, and coffee which was cold before they 
 were done they read, now silent and now aloud, 
 with ejaculations of surprise. 
 
 After the ladies had finished theirs, Effie 
 turned to Mr. Brinkerhoff, resolved to show that 
 the stiffness of a minute of yesterday should not 
 last. 
 
 "And what are your letters ? " she said. " You 
 have better luck than Fred has," for by this 
 time Fred had insisted that they should not 
 call him Mr. Haydock. 
 
 " Oh ! mine are all business, I am sorry to say, 
 except this from my mother. She has sent me 
 her picture, which she has just had taken at 
 Meserve s. It is not nearly good enough," he 
 added, fondly, as he gave it to Mrs. Abgar 
 to look upon. 
 
 " It is perfectly lovely," said she, frankly, and 
 with an artist s pleasure. " So friendly, and so 
 young." 
 
 " But why does not Amy write to you ? " said 
 Hester Sutphen, beginning to take advantage of 
 the newly born intimacies. " Is not there a word 
 from Amy ? " 
 
 Hiram Brinkerhoff looked puzzled, was puzzled. 
 
 " Why, this is Amy/ " said he, at last. " It 
 seems foolish to you, but I do not know, when I 
 
1 84 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 did not call my mother Amy/ My father liked 
 it. She liked it. And I am sure I liked it. 
 It was a trick of a baby, and I never grew out of 
 it when I was a man." 
 
 The girls would have given gold if they could 
 have kept their faces unchanged. But they 
 knew that blood flushed them. With the resolu 
 tion of martyrs at the stake they looked neither 
 to the right nor to the left. Effie Abgar said 
 nothing had nothing to say. But the recollec 
 tion of speculations and discussions about what 
 manner of woman Amy was would come back, 
 even in that moment. Hester, because she was 
 the interlocutor, forced herself to say, 
 
 " Why, we took it for granted you were mar 
 ried ; and, for one, I wondered why you never 
 said a word about your wife!" 
 
 With this bold speech the conversation dropped 
 for a moment. Fred Haydock would have given 
 his hot omelette if he could have thought of any 
 thing to say, but he could not. The pause was 
 but for an instant, when Tom Dustin came in to 
 ask if they would ride. 
 
 Yes, they would ride. And he need not drive 
 them. Mr. Haydock would drive. And each of 
 the four said to himself or herself that the botch 
 about Amy was over, and that it made no sort of 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 185 
 
 difference. And they ran up those queer stair 
 ways to their rooms round that Moorish court 
 yard, all saying to themselves, "It was all non 
 sense, and will make no difference." And when 
 the girls came into their own room Hester kissed 
 Effie and said, 
 
 " Did you think I was such a perfect fool ? 
 For I did not till this morning." 
 
 "We were all fools for a tenth part of a 
 second," said Effie. " But it will make no 
 difference now." 
 
 Still, in her heart she felt it would make a 
 difference. She understood in her heart of 
 hearts, that she and this loyal, frank, thoughtful, 
 experienced gentleman had been living together 
 for many days, and she, for one, thinking much 
 of him in other days, when they were not 
 together, with an ease and a simplicity which 
 would have been just possible, perhaps, had 
 each been quite well informed as to the other, 
 but to which, after these two blunders, it would 
 be very hard to return. 
 
 Hiram Brinkerhoff had had nearly twenty-four 
 hours to consider another question. And Hiram 
 Brinkerhoff was well aware, by this time, that 
 with this lovely, conscientious, unselfish woman, 
 so kind and affectionate, so quick of observation, 
 
1 86 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 but so unconscious of her own quickness and 
 tenderness, he did not want to be on the same 
 calm, reserved or unreserved relation in which 
 they had lived, while he had supposed her to 
 be a married woman, resting herself from the 
 cares of housekeeping, while she played the 
 matron for her friend. But Hiram Brinkerhoff 
 knew that he must somehow show himself worthy 
 such a woman if he would win her. . And this, 
 he knew, would take time. 
 
 Of the four he was perhaps the very cheeriest 
 of all, as they entered the ambulance. But it 
 was a lovely day. They were to see if they had 
 found what they had come so far to find ; and 
 they were all cheery. 
 
 " I believe," he said, so soon as all were seated, 
 " that we are to go and look for school-rooms for 
 Miss Sutphen s school. I have in my pocket a 
 list of unoccupied old court-rooms and vestries 
 of churches. Indeed, if she will pay enough, she 
 may have an old corn bin in the corner of the 
 Alamo, which the government has been storing 
 some musket-barrels in." 
 
 All this was his invention. There was no 
 such bin, nor such musket-barrels. But this 
 must be said, because some readers are dull. 
 
 " I thank you," said Hester, laughing. " But I 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 1 87 
 
 will not trouble you to look for rooms with me. 
 I know all my friends may not stay till autumn. 
 Let us go out to one of the Missions. I can 
 confess there, and receive absolution, which I 
 need. Meanwhile there seem to be enough 
 children here." 
 
 The multitude of children in the streets of a 
 city in which there is no system of general school 
 ing, always amazes a New Englander. 
 
 So they asked their way here, and asked it 
 there and without losing it more than twenty 
 times, they came to one of the " Missions." It 
 was not the one they started for, but what differ 
 ence did that make ? 
 
 A great ruined church a ruin as satisfactory 
 as if it had been in Morocco or Spain. Big dogs 
 had to be quelled and from the door of a hovel 
 came out a pretty, shy-looking Mexican girl with 
 an immense bunch of keys. Yes, there is a con 
 secrated altar still, and at fit times there is wor 
 ship still. But who worships, it would be hard 
 to say! For all this is miles away from the 
 city. But this was once the active centre of 
 one of those colonies of reduced Indians, Indios 
 reducidos, which the Franciscans managed some 
 how to convert to habits of peace. Of Christi 
 anity in its other forms, it is said that they 
 
1 88 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 knew the sign of the cross when they saw it. 
 And I am afraid they knew no more ! Where 
 are they now ? Quien sabe ? 
 
 It is a strangely fascinating place. A curious 
 bit of careful carving here, two or three rough- 
 hewn rails from a fence there ; a pile of fallen 
 stones, a crucifix and an altar. The inquiring 
 shy Mexican girl the inquiring eager New 
 England woman ! Are the two of the same 
 race, and were they born into the same world ? 
 
 There are, I believe, five mission buildings in 
 all. You might see two or three in a day ; but 
 our travellers were in no hurry. There are 
 wonders in the city as well the archives to be 
 hunted through, under Mr. Smith s kind help, 
 for rumors about Aaron Burr for the fate of 
 poor Philip Nolan the elder and in the hope 
 of a trace of Inez Perry and her aunt Eunice. 
 No end of thoughtful and kind hospitalities from 
 the gentlemen of the army, from their wives and 
 daughters, whose welcome to their homes made 
 these stray travellers feel as if this were not 
 a bit of Spain, not a scrap from Mexico but 
 that all that had been a dream, and they were all 
 at home. 
 
 One of their friends took them to the head 
 quarters, and here they were most cordially wel- 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 189 
 
 corned. Here they saw the very table on which 
 General Lee signed the great paper of capitula 
 tion at Appomattox Court House. " Had you 
 ever thought they had marble-topped tables in 
 such places ? " And here were gentlemen who 
 had been engaged in those long forced marches. 
 Ay ! and ladies who had .been watching and 
 waiting at home for those gentlemen. It was 
 hearing history, indeed, to listen to the anecdotes 
 of those days. 
 
 A thousand pretty hospitalities, a thousand 
 funny adventures, when they did not know 
 whether they were to speak German or Spanish, 
 or the language of Pimos or Panis ; loiterings in 
 gardens, and scampers on prairies, took up the 
 time, and would have taken up a great deal more. 
 
 Only too fast, in the climate of paradise, 
 slipped by the fortnight which was the furlough 
 which the young men had granted themselves. 
 
 In the morning, after an early walk, the ladies 
 would paint or draw, or press their flowers, or 
 dissect them, or sew or embroider, and the gen 
 tlemen would read or draw, or talk at their sides. 
 
 In the afternoon, after a siesta, all four would 
 ride. It never rained. 
 
 Dear reader, if you have a friend, who is a 
 little hectic, who begins to cough ; and if the 
 
WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 doctor begins to talk of a milder climate than 
 that of Boston or Portland or Bangor, think 
 twice before you send him or her whom you 
 love across the waters. While you are think 
 ing, determine whether it be not better for an 
 invalid to stay in his own country. Let him 
 go to San Antonio, said to be the most healthy 
 city in the world. Since these ladies went, a 
 railroad has been finished. So that the invalid 
 need not leave the " palace " till he arrive at his 
 journey s end. And there, with this exquisite 
 climate, there is all the variety of two or three 
 civilizations ; and, best of all, the presence of 
 friends who make him feel at home. 
 
 A full fortnight after our party arrived, a fort 
 night which seemed much longer, so complete 
 had been the change it wrought in all their 
 habits ; a fortnight in which they were wonted 
 to fruit, and roses, peas, and other summer 
 vegetables ; and, rising to a higher plane, to a 
 climate without a touch of winter, and as yet 
 without a breath of summer to the real spring 
 tide of poetry a full fortnight after their arrival 
 they made a merry horseback party, with some 
 officers of the garrison, and some young ladies 
 who were now near friends ; and of this party 
 the objective was " The Springs." 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 191 
 
 The copious rush of the green waters of the San 
 Antonio or of its sister river always makes a pic 
 turesque point whenever, in riding or in walk 
 ing, you come to either stream. There is a little 
 i watering-place, perhaps under German oversight, 
 much favored by the people who have leisure for 
 a drive, not many miles out of the town, where, 
 in one or another corner, is a table set in the 
 open air where a bridge here, a bank of willows 
 or mesquits there, give resting-places for talk, 
 and where, any afternoon, there cluster throngs 
 of children and of grown-up children, too 
 who are not beyond or above being amused. 
 
 As it happened, on this particular afternoon, 
 as the different members of the party strolled 
 through the grounds together, Hiram Brinkerhoff 
 and Effie Abgar stood on a great mass of rock, 
 from beneath which pours out a stream of raging 
 water, as the fountain of Arethusa may be sup 
 posed to rush forth from its long underground 
 prison. No end of underground waters there. 
 There are people who think that two-thirds of 
 the rainfall of the Valley of the Mississippi flows 
 in such underground currents to the sea ! 
 
 Frederic Haydock and Hester Sutphen had 
 disappeared. They were lost, as one is apt to 
 be, on a mesquit grown prairie, and as they had 
 often been before. 
 
1 92 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 " How happy they are," said Hiram, when Mrs. 
 Abgar had said she wondered where they would 
 turn up this time. 
 
 " Yes indeed," was her answer ; "and no one 
 deserves happiness more than she." Her eyes 
 flashed as she praised her friend. " You will say 
 so, when you know her as I do. She has never 
 sought happiness, since she gave me the biggest 
 half of her stick of barley candy. She has never 
 grumbled, but in fun. She has been her mother s 
 blessing ; where, indeed, any of us would have 
 been but for her, I do not know. And, he ? I 
 hope he is as true as he seems ? " This with an 
 eager question. 
 
 " Never fear for him," said Hiram, boldly. 
 " Truer heart never beat, under breastplate or 
 under muslin. I am glad to see how she loves 
 him but she cannot love that man too well. 
 He is as gentle as he is true, and he is as true 
 as he is brave." 
 
 And Hiram looked as handsome as Amadis 
 himself as he blazed up for his friend. Both of 
 them were silent for a moment silent from the 
 very emotion of pride with which they had 
 spoken silent as well, be it added, because 
 each was so glad to speak to somebody who 
 could respect such enthusiasm. The man took 
 
OF A PULLMAN. IQ3 
 
 courage first to break a silence which each en 
 joyed. 
 
 " I must leave this paradise to-morrow," he 
 said, and he faltered a moment, "where I, too, 
 have been happier than I have ever been in my 
 life. I must go to my work again, for I too have 
 something to do in life besides studying how I 
 shall be happy. But I will not go till I have told 
 you, what I think you know, how you are every 
 thing to me ; and that, in the month since I met 
 you so happily, I have been more, seen more, 
 known more, and hoped more than in all my life 
 before. May I tell Amy that," and he smiled, 
 half sadly, " and may I ask her to write to you 
 and beg you to make me perfectly happy ? There 
 is a sweetheart who will never be jealous of you." 
 And he smiled with that serious smile again. 
 
 No ! She was not startled. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Brinkerhoff, you, see in me what 
 is not here. But I do not think that matters 
 I never thought I should stand where I stand 
 no, nor that I should say what I say. But I 
 should be very unwomanly and very mean 
 if I did not say as soon as I can find any 
 words that that I should be very wretched, 
 if I thought I must go back to the East alone!" 
 
 It was a blundering answer. But it served her 
 13 
 
IQ4 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 turn and his. He flung his arm around her and 
 kissed her, and led her by some mysterious by 
 way to the gate-way of " the Springs." He found 
 their horses, without calling on any of the rest of 
 the party, and they rode home before the rest of 
 the party. 
 
 Perhaps the army gentlemen thought that the 
 New Englanders had very queer ways when they 
 went on riding parties. If they did, they were 
 unjust to the New Englanders ; for neither 
 Mr. Haydock the " carpet-bagger," nor Mr. 
 Brinkerhoff the "drummer," hailed from New 
 England. 
 
 These gentlemen made all right that evening. 
 At Mrs. Gen. McLain s elegant party, no men 
 were more attentive and courteous to all the 
 guests than Mr. Haydock and his friend. Nor 
 did the ladies lack attention, because the gen 
 tlemen of their personal escort left them mostly to 
 the care of the gentlemen who were more at 
 home. 
 
 As one of the groups gathered round the 
 piano, in illustration of some story, Lieutenant 
 Laudonniere sang a little song in honor of 
 Texas which he said a Spanish bishop, Don 
 Diego Marin, wrote when Texas was yet a 
 wilderness. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 195 
 
 Dios te salve, tierra de Texas, 
 Do Natura, con hermosuras 
 Antes no conocidas se mostrd : 
 
 Aqui la mano divina 
 
 Que todo lo ordena, 
 Con mas complacencia se paro. 
 
 El llano de tus verdes prados, 
 De mil colores esmaltados, 
 
 Con la quietud del vasto mar 
 
 Y horizonte inmenso 
 
 Se revela estenso 
 Ouando se ve el sol rayar. 
 
 Entre mil naranjos floridos, 
 
 Que se desmayen mis sentidos, 
 
 Quiero mis lores olvidar, 
 
 E ya no Prelado, 
 
 E dormir sepultadc 
 En atmosfera de Azaar. 
 
 Every one was delighted. "Only we do not 
 understand the Spanish," said Mrs. Abgar. " Mil 
 colores I can well make out, and naranjos, 
 but then I break down." 
 
 " Then I will try again," said the Lieutenant, 
 and he sang his little translation : 
 
 Fair land of Texas, Heaven save thee, 
 Nature her choicest blessings gave thee 
 And beauty all unknown before ! 
 The all creating Word 
 Thy loveliness preferred, 
 Pronounced it good, and gave one blessing more ! 
 
1 96 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 Enamelled plains so far extending, 
 A thousand rival colors blending, 
 Stretch out as broadly as the lonely sea : 
 When the first sunbeams shine 
 On its horizon line, 
 To show how wide and lovely earth can be. 
 
 Thine orange breezes gently blowing 
 Sweep all away the plague of knowing, 
 I lay my Bishop s grandeur gladly by, 
 Beneath thy fragrant trees, 
 Enjoy the scented breeze, 
 And let these cares in thy Elysium die. 
 
 In the hearty applause which followed the un 
 expected version, our four friends looked sympa 
 thetically, each on other, as if this dear old 
 Bishop had sung for them what they would be 
 glad for themselves to say. 
 
 Hester broke the silence to thank the Lieuten 
 ant. " You have given Mrs. Abgar all she 
 needed to complete her song-book." 
 
 " All ? What is that ? " he asked laughing. 
 
 " Oh ! Mrs. Abgar is only a Boston cockney, 
 you know. She never dreamed of what her own 
 country was, one out of many. But now she 
 has picked up, in a month s time, from the lips of" 
 her own countrymen : 
 
 " First, a Pennsylvania!! song, then a Chippe- 
 way song." 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 1 97 
 
 " And a German and a French," interrupted 
 Fred Haydock. 
 
 " Don t forget the negro song, and our Texan 
 Methodist song," said Effie. 
 
 " No ! no ! and there is a Norwegian song, and 
 an Italian song, Lieutenant Laudonniere, and 
 now you give her a Spanish song, all sung by 
 her own countrymen." 
 
 " Let Mrs. Abgar stay only a few weeks longer, 
 and she shall hear a Mexican ranchero, a Caman- 
 che chief, a Greek Vivandiere, and an Arab 
 Sheikh, if I can find one of the camel drivers," 
 said he. " They are all her countrymen, but I 
 hope she would, all the same, be at home." 
 
 "Indeed, I should be," said Effie frankly. 
 "And yet, do you know, Dustin, the good- 
 natured fellow who drove our ambulance, would 
 gladly have persuaded us to go as much farther, 
 still in our own country, as we have come." 
 
 " Yes," said Haydock, laughing, " I overheard 
 him. Just as well go on to Chihuahua, Mrs. 
 Abgar, only five hundred miles, this team take 
 you easy in thirty days. Just as well go on to 
 Fort Yuma, only six hundred miles more, this 
 team take you easy. And then, Mrs. Abgar, 
 nothing to go to San Frisky. Ever been to San 
 Frisky, Mrs. Abgar ? ever been there, Miss Sut- 
 phen ? These were the words he said." 
 
198 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 They all laughed. " But we are too much at 
 home here," said Effie, " though now we must 
 say good-night to Mrs. McLain." 
 
 But here came, indeed, the end of this story. 
 Not but the ladies spent the foreordained month 
 in San Antonio. But the gentlemen left them 
 the morning after Gen. McLain s party, one to 
 his office and the other to his merchandise. But 
 when the end of May came after Effie and 
 Hester had had the charming month of rest 
 and of paradise which they went for ; had read 
 and sung, and drawn and painted had picked 
 .flowers, and pressed them and analyzed them 
 had talked, and slept, and dreamed to their 
 heart s content then their two fellow-travellers 
 appeared again, knowing that they were ready to 
 go back to other strawberries and to other 
 cream. 
 
 " There is one more lion," said Mrs. Abgar to 
 one of their hosts as he called on the last even 
 ing " which I shall ask you to take me to see. 
 I m sure there s a market here, no, I don t 
 mean a butcher s shop, a market in the open air. 
 I always make Hester go to the markets with me. 
 We have tried it here, but not before breakfast." 
 
 And so she had in every southwestern town 
 where they had spent any time ; and though 
 
OF A PULLMAN. IQ9 
 
 sometimes they were not all her fancy painted, 
 they were generally a great deal better. 
 
 Neither Hiram nor Fred knew about the San 
 Antonio market. But Mr. La Tour said very 
 readily that he did know ; and, at half-past six in 
 the morning of their last day, he knocked at 
 their parlor door, and led them out of their 
 dear Menger House, through the Alamo Plaza, 
 and into the town beyond. "We re going to 
 the Military Plaza," he said. 
 
 "A Plaza isn t such a mysterious thing, after 
 all," said Hester, looking back at the gloomy 
 beautiful Alamo, across a wide expanse of gravel 
 and dust. " It will be a good word to astonish 
 them with at home, but the more familiar Square 
 describes it as well for us." 
 
 " No, indeed ! " cried Effie.. " Squares aren t 
 as large." 
 
 " A Plaza was a Plaza once," said Mr. La Tour. 
 " When you saw a little army drawn up in the 
 Military Plaza, where we are going ; or when the 
 Greasers, as you call them, were beating through 
 the Alamo gates behind us, then Miss Sut- 
 phen would have found it Spanish enough," 
 
 Spanish enough they did find it, when, at the 
 end of their walk, they came out into the great 
 open space crowded with ox-carts, mule-carts, 
 
200 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 saddled horses, and buyers and sellers. The 
 brown Mexicans with stiff black hair under those 
 felt sombreros, so dear to Effie s heart, with 
 actually leathern straps to keep them on, like 
 little boys ; light cotton shirts, red-topped boots, 
 or leathern leggings, and an occasional crimson 
 silk scarf round the waist, or a gay handkerchief 
 about the neck, such figures as these, with 
 melancholy brown faces, as much Indian as 
 Spanish, were quite as delightful as the ideal 
 Texan herdsmen, though they were not at all 
 the same thing. And the women were a new 
 revelation of the possible beauty of the arrange 
 ment of a shawl over the head ; though our 
 travellers wished that their Moorish reserve 
 didn t sometimes make them hold it over the 
 lower part of the face. Such people as these 
 they had often seen before in "San Antone," 
 especially in Chihuahua, as they call the Mexican 
 quarter ; but never so many together, and never 
 under such delightful circumstances. There was 
 a little boy struggling with a lively cock which 
 he had bought against its will; there were women 
 selling the brightest of green and red vegetables ; 
 there but Mr. La Tour was pointing out one 
 group, the most Mexican of all. One of the 
 women was sitting on the ground with a great 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 2OI 
 
 three-legged black iron pot before her ; there was 
 no fire visible, but she was taking out and dis 
 tributing some kmd of hot breakfast, which her 
 friends were eating at a table with a white cloth 
 close by. One or two preferred squatting on 
 the ground ; her little daughter, in her gray veil, 
 was handing round cups of coffee. Behind, were 
 the strong light ox-carts which carry cotton to 
 Mexico, of which some of the guests were 
 probably drivers ; farther back still, were the 
 low, white, stucco Spanish houses of the square. 
 Effie s sketch of part of all this was interrupted 
 by Mr. La Tour s bringing her some of the con 
 tents of the pot : this was a little bundle, wrapped 
 in a soft and thin corn-husk in which it had been 
 cooked. Inside was Indian meal and red pepper 
 and mince-meat ; and, strange to say, it was very 
 nice! It made Effie s breakfast that day. 
 
 " The meal for this must be ground by hand/ 
 said Mr. La Tour, and he led them into a pawn 
 broker s shop close by, where they saw low stone 
 three-legged stools, with other stones upon them ; 
 and these, they were told, were mills, at which 
 two women ground, almost as they did in Pales 
 tine. All sorts of other interesting things were 
 in this shop ; gay worsted hat-bands, saddles, 
 whips, silver jewelry, every thing in fact which 
 
202 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 a Mexican can pawn to pay his gambling debts ; 
 and unfortunately of these there are too many. 
 
 On the way home, before they crossed the 
 pretty bridges over the deep blue river, they 
 thought no Swiss lake could be bluer, on 
 the way home, they stopped at another shop, 
 where they could get chocolate, and graceful 
 earthen water-coolers, and tremendous whips 
 to carry home with them for the boys, and 
 Mexican tobacco for the gentlemen ("the only 
 good thing the Greasers do make" said Tom 
 Dustin), and high colored hat-bands for Phil 
 Abgar s boys, and, indeed, "no end" of quaint 
 half -savage tokens. They asked in vain for 
 long gfay silk shawls which the brown women 
 wore ; though they saw them directly after 
 wards in the street ; their wearers were carrying 
 great wooden cages of little birds, and offered 
 them to the ladies with mysterious smiles. The 
 Mexicans were almost the only women to be 
 seen on foot in the streets. Hester had been 
 out alone once walking , and, though no one was 
 rude to her, she had not been sorry to rejoin her 
 own sex : the solitude in company was as shock 
 ing as Alexander Selkirk found the tameness of 
 the beasts. This was Spanish too. 
 
 Little appetite, after the nameless morning 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 203 
 
 cakes, for the nice Menger House breakfast. 
 And then when the last good-byes were spoken, 
 Dustin having been summoned once more, they 
 started to cross the prairie to Austin. This 
 time no brigands frightened them. They arrived 
 just in time to secure berths "six" and " seven," 
 " eight " and " nine," in the Pullman. Shall we 
 say of course Aurelius was standing on the plat 
 form ? "Here s your palace car, ladies and 
 gentlemen." 
 
 Of course the palace was the GOLCOXDA. 
 
204 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 TT 7 HEN they arrived in Austin a month be 
 fore, they had entered Austin in the 
 early morning. The ladies were then alone, and 
 rather doubtful of the adventure they were 
 essaying ; the gentlemen also were alone, a 
 few days after, and eager to join their agreeable 
 companions. It has been confessed already in 
 these pages, that, of all the experiences of life in 
 Palaces, the morning hour is the least agreeable. 
 There is an attentive lackey, yes ! But even he 
 is engaged in making sixteen beds return to 
 their hiding-places, and in making sixteen sofas 
 appear in their places. There is no turbaned 
 page with soft step to bring you a cup of coffee. 
 There is no luxurious seat on an open veranda 
 covered with honeysuckle and quamoclit. There 
 is close air without, and faintness, hunger, and 
 general misery within, till one can touch his 
 mother earth, as Antaeus did, and breathe his 
 mother air. Then one returns to the Palace 
 after he has breakfasted to find all changed : he 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 205 
 
 is ready for empire, and another day of monarch 
 life begins. 
 
 As all of the four whose fortunes we follow 
 had first entered Austin from the east in such 
 guise of the misery of early morning, it followed 
 that there was a surprise every minute, now 
 that they dashed eastward, caught sight of the 
 river, and through the prairies, with the sights 
 of beauty, which they had not guessed at when 
 they came. Indeed indeed each of the four 
 was now in a mood, than which earth has little 
 more heavenlike ; and because they were happy 
 already, they were all the more ready to enjoy. 
 
 "May decked the world, and Arthur filled the throne." 
 
 Hester almost sang these words as they re 
 tired slowly from the open door at the rear of 
 the car, where they had been wondering at the 
 beauty of the cross lights and the cloud shadows 
 on the prairie, always so marvellous. 
 
 " The last day of May," said Hiram Brinker- 
 hoff. " But where is this line, Miss Hester, 
 which drops from you so often, by night and 
 morning ; and is there more of the same poem ? 
 Or is it perhaps the beginning of an unpublished 
 epic by Miss Sutphen and Mr. Haydock ? 
 
 May decked the world, and Arthur filled the throne. " 
 
206 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 " There is more, and more as good as that, 
 if you will only search wisely, Mr. Hiram. Ask 
 Effie there, and she will repeat to you the whole 
 story of two happy lovers in a happy valley, 
 only " and she stopped. 
 
 "Only," said Effie bravely, "that the true 
 knight had to go away to attend to his distant 
 duty, and the fair lady had .to stay in the valley 
 without him;" and then, more seriously, she 
 repeated, 
 
 " And I might ask how more can mortals please 
 
 The heavens, than thankful to enjoy the earth ? 
 But through its mist, my soul, though faintly, sees 
 
 Where thine sweeps on beyond this mountain girth, 
 And awed and dazzled, bending I confess 
 Life may have holier ends than happiness. 
 
 " You see," she added after a moment, " this 
 lady was a princess. She had always lived in 
 palaces, and she had always done as she chose, 
 and had had her own way, till Arthur came ; and 
 then she had to do as he chose, and let him have 
 his own way, even when that way took him 
 outside the mountain valley, and far very far 
 from her." 
 
 "All the same," said Fred, who would not 
 come down from the extreme good-cheer of his 
 mood, " all the same no one tells me who this 
 Arthur was. Was he in the wholesale drug 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 2O? 
 
 business, travelling on account of Mandrake, 
 Bromide, & Co., and was this palace in which 
 the princess lived a palace on wheels, and did he 
 have to return to Caradoc,. that the firm might 
 be able to answer his orders for the fall trade, 
 or was he in the quack-nostrum line, I beg par 
 don, in the Panacea business, travelling for Row 
 land, Crespigny, & Co., and had he heard that 
 another house was introducing a new nervine ? " 
 
 " He shall not be jeered at," said Hester re 
 proachfully, "though he certainly was a travel 
 ling gentleman," she added. " If there are any 
 knights of this generation who have not read 
 Bulwer s King Arthur, it is time they did. 
 For rather staid, old-fashioned poetry, a. little 
 machine-built, but good in doctrine, and some 
 times bubbling into the supreme article it is 
 very good travelling reading for four wandering 
 lovers." 
 
 " We will read it aloud between St. Louis and 
 New York," cried Hiram. And he took a tele 
 graph blank from the ready rack, -- and, to his 
 correspondent at St Louis, wrote, 
 
 " Bring me Bulwer s King Arthur at evening train on 
 second." 
 
 "Tell me," said he, "that King Arthur also 
 shall not be enthroned in the GOLCONDA." 
 
208 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 " It is all very fine," said Hester, as he came 
 back from forwarding his despatch, at Hemp- 
 stead, "and I am sure I like to imagine that 
 Erfie s real name is Aegle, and that mine is Elaine, 
 but, all the same, I do not believe that Elaine or 
 Queen Guinever herself ever had a horned frog." 
 
 " Had what ? " 
 
 " Had a horned frog ! Did you never see one ? " 
 And she opened her handkerchief ; and gently 
 stroked one of the weird little monsters, which, 
 while the gentlemen were absent, she had bought 
 of a boy at the car window. 
 
 They both affected horror at sight of the little 
 wretch. 
 
 "IJe is a hundred thousand million billion 
 years old," cried Haydock. " He was made be 
 fore evolution began. The evening and the 
 morning were the first day." 
 
 " Aegle was stroking him when Arthur bade 
 her good-by in the happy valley," said Hiram. 
 " He carries you back behind all the Babels." 
 
 " Some merits he has which later times have 
 lost," said Hester, " for he needs no food, and I 
 believe no water. 
 
 With temperance he both eats and drinks, 
 And gives the poor the whole. ", 
 
 " He is no more a frog than I am," cried Effie, 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 209 
 
 with her naturalist skill. " He is a lizard of the 
 genus PJirynosomu, whatever that hiay mean. 
 He is Phrynosoma orbicular e, because, if you 
 please, his body is so orbicular. And dear old 
 Phil will be glad to have him to catch flies in the 
 green-house, and to amuse the boys : they have all 
 seen him in the Iconographic Cyclopaedia. I am 
 not sure but he is cornuta and not orbiculare" 
 
 " Do you say he eats nothing ? " 
 
 " Oh, not for a week -or two, if his keepers are 
 on their last greenbacks, as we are." 
 
 " He looks as if he had eaten nothing since 
 
 This fair world first rounded to the view. 
 
 You will never tell me that Texas is a new 
 country again." 
 
 "Can anybody tell me," said Effie, as the 
 train moved away from the station, and they 
 began their northward way, " why Texas was 
 left out till the very end of time. When such 
 crags and deserts as those of Tommy s rocks 
 in Roxbury, and the marshes of Cambridgeport 
 have been peopled, why has this lovely Texas 
 with these 
 
 Enamelled plains so far extending, 
 been left desert, and without any people but 
 these ante-creationals." 
 
 14 
 
210 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 "Philip the Second, my dear," said Hester. 
 " Fred has "been coaching me." 
 
 " Pope Alexander the Sixth," said Fred. / Hi 
 ram has been lecturing to me." ? 
 
 " Laziness and greed," said Brinkerhoff : " there 
 was never such a horrible illustration of bad 
 government." 
 
 "Poor La Salle," he continued, "after he had 
 discovered the course of the Mississippi, came 
 out here with a colony, -> and here they killed 
 him : he must have crossed our line, I fancy, not 
 so very far from where we are." 
 
 " That gave France a right here, if there were 
 any right; and that made Spain afraid that 
 France would come near her silver mines yonder. 
 And so, as Hester says, Spain enacted that 
 neither oil-olive, nor luscious grape, neither wheat 
 nor maize, nor sugar nor cotton, should grow on 
 these thousands upon thousands of thousands of 
 acres. Better they should lie waste for ever, 
 than that the most Catholic King s people and 
 the most Christian King s people should come 
 too near together." 
 
 " What broke all that down ? " 
 
 " To answer in very short metre, Philip 
 Nolan broke it down, so Judge Harford here 
 says. If I could make you stop two days longer, 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 211 
 
 we would go over to Waco yonder, and find his 
 grave, and plant lilies upon it." 
 
 " And I might liberate my frog there." 
 But there was not much more talk. A sharp 
 thunder-storm struck them as it grew dark, and 
 there was little for it, but to look at this fork of 
 the " flames of the lightning," and to wonder at 
 that crash, till Aurelius changed the day pal 
 ace into a night palace. 
 
 And when they woke again, they were cross 
 ing the Red River, more than two hundred 
 miles higher up than they had left it at Shreve- 
 port. And how red it is! almost vermilion! 
 And this country, too, " the garden of Texas " as 
 they were assured, was laughing with beauty. 
 
 And then, not long after, they bade Texas 
 good-by. And now they were in the Indian 
 Territory. And all that day stopping not once 
 an hour they were speeding north, with this 
 same eager flight, through the rich green of the 
 prairie land, of wealth which cannot be told ; 
 and for an hour at a time there would be no sigh 
 of man but the track of the railway ! 
 
 " Oh dear, oh dear ! " sighed Effie, " if my poor 
 Shays, and Donavans and Mrs. Murphy and the 
 Holden boys were only here, instead of starving 
 in Lucas Street and in Oswego Street, instead 
 
212 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 of drinking in Sands Court, and dying of cholera 
 infantum in Swett. Street." 
 
 " Do you know why they are not here, and 
 why they cannot be here ? Do you know why 
 Rothschild, with all his wealth, cannot buy an 
 acre of this land ? " This was Hiram s question. 
 
 " Cannot ! I thought money could do every 
 thing. It could at Fort Sill yonder," and Hester 
 pointed over her shoulder westward. 
 
 " Cannot," said Fred Haydock, laughing, " un 
 less Baron Rothschild married a Cherokee lady ! 
 Then he might buy till he were tired, or, in 
 deed, have, without buying, I believe." 
 
 Then Hiram explained that the United States 
 government had bound itself by treaty with the 
 Cherokees and Chickasaws and Choctaws, and 
 Creeks and Seminoles and Muscogees, never 
 to sell any of this land, as long as the winds 
 should blow or the waters flow. He explained 
 that, all told, there were- not a hundred thousand 
 of these Indians. But that, such is the force of 
 treaties, these hundred thousand Indians, who 
 are not hunters, generally speaking, but have 
 settled down to farming, have a matchless terri 
 tory, a third part the size of France, given to 
 them ; which is, acre for acre, far more produc 
 tive than France is. He explained that no one, 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 21$ 
 
 not an Indian of another tribe even, might enter 
 here, because the United States had made these 
 l treaties with these people. 
 
 " Will any one explain to me," said Effie, " in 
 what this policy differs from that of Philip the 
 Second ? " 
 
 But nobody explained. 
 
 All the same, the train dashed on. There is 
 something almost weird and uncanny in this 
 sailing through oceans of green, only broken by 
 pretty copses of wood or gentle swells of land, 
 without a fence, a house, a barn, a road beside 
 that you travel on, without cow or horse or 
 sheep. Only an unused fertile world waiting for 
 men ! 
 
 But at every station-house, there would be one 
 or two men waiting, and sometimes a passenger. 
 They must have come from somewhere. And 
 once there was a college, after they came into 
 the Cherokee country. But Hester confesses 
 that, in her journal, it is not the political econo 
 my that is noted, nor the advance of the Chero- 
 kees in education, but that good supper at 
 Muskogee ! 
 
 On and on ! Conundrums as it grew dark in 
 the evening ; an effort to talk with the reticent 
 half-breed lady who came into the car on her 
 
214 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 way northward, where she had a daughter at 
 school in Ohio. And then, all the light melts 
 away, though we are in June ; and, as they be 
 gin to be drowsy, even the substantial fabric 
 of the palace melts away, the sofas are gone, the 
 people are gone, and " Six and Seven " have 
 been " made up " by the faithful Aurelius, and 
 the tired travellers " turn in." 
 
 Asleep and unconscious they pass through 
 Kansas, where in old times their own brothers 
 had fought and conquered. They wake to an 
 other climate, and another vegetation. They 
 are in the South no longer. They are in a des 
 ert no longer. They are forging on and on, 
 down the valleys that lead to the Missouri, with 
 here a town and there a town, and all the first 
 scars of man s conflict with nature. 
 
 What seems strangest of all, in such a journey, 
 is the setting back of the orchards and farm 
 lands some three weeks, between your night and 
 your morning. When you pass in a day a beau 
 tiful desert like the Indian Territory, so as to 
 leave, as these" people had done, the gardens of 
 northern Texas on Tuesday morning to come 
 into those of central Missouri on Wednesday 
 morning, with no fine gradation by the way, but 
 by one sudden leap, it is all the more strange. 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 21$ 
 
 They had a Sunday-school picnic tumbled in 
 on the train somewhere, a strawberry party or 
 some such entertainment. And when, at Jeffer 
 son, Hiram rushed out to forage, he was led 
 away by the throng. For he acted on Jacob 
 Abbot s direction to Rollo, for travelling, " Go 
 where the rest go." But, as he soon found that, 
 if he went to hear the Rev. Abner Goosh make 
 a " few remarks " to the children, he should not 
 rejoin his own party, he was seen by them rush 
 ing wildly back to the station-house, only in time 
 to seize from a licensed dealer a loaf of bread, 
 to wave it in the air over the head of a deacon, 
 so as to attract the licensed dealer s attention, 
 and to deposit, as probable pay, two nickels on 
 the counter. Even with these abridgments of 
 the process of bargaining, Hiram returned to 
 the GOLCONDA only as she began to move. 
 
 " It was," he said, " as Miles Standish took the 
 corn, and left in its place a leather jerkin, though 
 he saw no salvages. * 
 
 So this large loaf was to be their lunch, for 
 they had voted not to dine till they came to St. 
 Louis. Then was it that the innate hospitality 
 appeared, of those who live in Palaces. The 
 Russian gentleman from Alaska, who had come 
 in, in the night, offered caviare, the Mexican gen- 
 
2l6 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 tleman, who had been a fellow passenger all the 
 way from Austin, offered chocolate, the half- 
 breed lady offered butter, which was of all the 
 sweeter taste, because it was Cherokee butter 
 from a Cherokee cow. Knives, forks, spoons, 
 vodka if they would have had it, nay, prob 
 ably, saki from Japan. So our friends made a 
 merry picnic, from a table served by half the 
 world. 
 
 " Do you remember in the Evenings at Home 
 a Presbyterian offered her smelling-bottle, and a 
 Quaker ran for the doctor ? " 
 
 "Do I remember it? It comes down like a 
 forgotten prophecy of the kingdom coming ! 
 But I can see now the broad-brimmed man, in 
 the picture. The only time, I think that I ever 
 saw a Quaker run, always excepting Obed Macy 
 when we played football in college." 
 
 And now they were by the Southern side of 
 the Missouri. The great " rampage " was not 
 over, on which they had all four floated, two 
 months before. 
 
 " Since we met, I have been reading La Salle s 
 account of this very Muddy River, Pekatonoui 
 they called it, which meant muddy." 
 
 " Men change, but rivers do not. But think, 
 I suppose he was half a year coming here 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 21 / 
 
 from Canada, and when shall we cross the Ni 
 agara ? " 
 
 " Before we wake on Thursday morning ! " 
 
 " That is flying, indeed ! " 
 
 And at St. Louis the faithful and hospitable 
 Jabez Cottingham appeared, with the needed 
 " King Arthur." Surely they would stop for a few 
 days. No ! not they. They were homeward bound, 
 and they could only stop for the supper, which was 
 their dinner, and then on again in the GOLCONDA. 
 For the good fortune of this particular visit had 
 ordered her back to New York again. 
 
 So they crossed, as day paled, the wonderful 
 bridge ; but of Illinois they can tell little, for 
 they slept as they swept through. 
 
 " Illinois," said Hiram, " means men. The 
 natives here would not acknowledge that there 
 were any others." And, when they breakfasted 
 in that weird, many-landish breakfast-room at 
 Chicago, he, told where that word "Chicago" ap 
 pears first in literature. It was at a great council 
 which Tonti held in 1659, when chiefs from 
 Chicago were made to give in their fealty to Le 
 Grand Monarque, Louis XIV. Does some Chi 
 cago King of Corn and Corners think of that 
 some day, as he walks through the battle gallery 
 of republican Versailles ? 
 
218 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 On and on, for ever on ! We oil the. wheels. 
 We feed the men and women. We water the 
 engine. But that is all, and we rush through 
 Michigan for another day. 
 
 " Si peninsulam amoenam quaeris, circum- 
 spice." This is the droll motto of the State. 
 Droll but very true ! Names all mixed together, 
 from all the eras of history, Niles, Kalamazoo, 
 Homer, Jackson, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and De 
 troit ! A well-read man he, profound in the phi 
 losophy of history, who will weave together, in 
 the damask web of a day s story, the threads 
 which are spun out by the associations of those 
 names ! And at Detroit, such a sunset ! and 
 such a supper ! It is your last of Western pro 
 fusion, Hester and Efne, Hiram and Fred ! 
 
 Night drops a curtain over Canada, but still 
 we rush on ! Yes, we do not even wake to see 
 Niagara in the morning. We do not really wake 
 till we breakfast at Rochester ! 
 
 And all that day, as our little party were 
 whirled on in their palace over that New York 
 Central Road, which Mr. Howells has made clas 
 sical for. lovers and for travellers, they had to 
 wonder at the agriculture of the North, as if they 
 had come from another world. Two cows only 
 together, or at most ten or twelve ! How lonely 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 2 1 9 
 
 they must be ! and how small these fields ! how 
 narrow all these measures, to people who had 
 forgotten fences, and felt as if all men owned, if 
 they would take it, all the world ! 
 
 And if they felt this in New York, how much 
 more when they came to the gardens farms no 
 longer of their dear Massachusetts ! But how 
 delicious home was ! How they rushed from 
 window to window to see a mountain or cascade ! 
 How they sympathized with the little boy from 
 Illinois, when he called his mother to show to 
 her the marvel, which he saw for the first time, 
 a Yankee "stone wall"! 
 
 On and on ! Night settled on them at 
 Palmer. Still it was on and on ! And when, at 
 last, they swept into the sight of Charles River 
 by the Arsenal in Watertown, as it lay there 
 beautiful under the moon so nearly full, the 
 Tenore Assoluto of the party sang the last song 
 of the Palace Journey. 
 
 At Springfield they had lost most of their 
 companions, with eager goodbyes and promises 
 of mutual visits. At Worcester, that nice Aus 
 tralian lady, with her five boys, who had come 
 through from San Francisco by palace, left them 
 that she might go on to Halifax, by the route 
 which leaves Boston out in the cold. So was it 
 
220 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 
 
 that our friends were all alone between Worces 
 ter and Boston. For the GOLCONDA did not reg 
 ularly belong on that line, nor do I know how it 
 came there. 
 
 As they swept by the Arsenal at W r atertown, 
 and the moon shone brightly on the river, 
 Hiram broke out, as of old on the Juniata, into 
 singing : 
 
 
 I sang in the daylight, I sing in the dark, 
 
 I sing by Charles River, I sang by San Marc ; 
 
 I sang in the mesquit, until the woods rang 
 By the blue Juniata I rode and I sang. 
 
 From the land of the olive, the orange, and vine, 
 The mesquit sent love to the cedar and pine. 
 
 The land of the jasmine, the myrtle, and rose, 
 Has sent my true love to the land of the snows. 
 
 The land of the sunset that s glowing afar, 
 Has sent my true love to the cold northern star. 
 
 But at this moment all romance ceased. A 
 belated baggage agent came into the palace for 
 
OF A PULLMAN. 221 
 
 orders. " Baggage taken to any part of the city. 
 What hotel, Sir ? " 
 
 And the glamour of the orange and vine left 
 them ; and, as they saw the gas lights of the 
 Western Avenue and Beacon Street, they knew 
 that the journey of the dear GOLCONDA was 
 ended. 
 
 " Dear, dear Philip ! and are the children all 
 well ? " 
 
 " Well and hearty, and you ? " 
 
 "All well! we are all well! This is Hiram 
 I mean this is Mr. Brinkerhoff, and this is 
 Mr. Haydock." 
 
 And Philip had kissed Hester Sutphen al 
 ready. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Cambridge : Press of John Wilson & Son. 
 
TOWN AND COUNTRY SERIES. 
 
 A WINTER STORY. 
 
 BY MISS PEARD, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE ROSE GARDEN," "UNAWARES," "THORPE REGIS." 
 
 "The author of The Rose Garden has written a fresh novel, 
 which Roberts Brothers have just published in their Town and 
 Country Series, under the title A Winter Story. The volumes 
 of this series are well printed, tastefully bound in cloth, with appro 
 priate designs stamped on the cover, and are sold at a dollar each." 
 
 "Another volume of the Town and Country Series contains 
 the latest of Miss Peard s pretty novelettes. A Winter Story is 
 extremely simple and unaffected in style, and possesses the same 
 quiet charm that characterized The Rose Garden and Un 
 awares. Whoever has read the former will seek to know what this 
 pleasing writer has to say, in her idyllic way, about love and other 
 kindred matters, in the present volume. The scene is laid in an 
 English village, but deals with uncommon people in very peculiar 
 circumstances." 
 
 "We confess to a liking for this Winter Story of hers which 
 possesses a good deal of originality and ingenuity. It is a thought 
 ful tale, with a good deal more in it than appears at first sight on the 
 surface. It is a story which actually grows in favor with the reader, 
 and the interest is well kept up. Miss Peard is making strides in 
 her profession, and each new novel is better than her last. We can 
 commend this latest edition of the Town and Country Series to 
 lovers of a healthy tone of fiction." 
 
 Our publications are to be had of all booksellers. When not 
 to be found, send directly to 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 
 
 BOSTON. 
 
Tt 
 
 PUBLISHERS ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 From the Boston Daily Advertiser. 
 
 THE "NO NAME SERIES." 
 
 "LEIGH HUNT, in his * Indicator J has a pleasant chapter 
 on the difficulty he encountered in seeking a suitable and fresh 
 title for a collection of his miscellaneous writings. Messrs. 
 Roberts Brothers have just overcome a similar difficulty in 
 the simplest manner. In selecting "No NAME," they have 
 selected the very best title possible for a series of Original 
 American Novels and Tales, to be published Anonymously. 
 These novels are to be written by etninejit authors, and in 
 each case the authorship of the work is to remain an inviolable 
 secret. "No Name" describes the Series perfectly. No name 
 will help the novel, or the story, to success. Its success will 
 depend solely on the writer s ability to catch and retain the 
 reader s interest. Several of the most distinguished writers 
 of American fiction have agreed to contribute to the Series, 
 the initial volume of which is now in press. Its appearance 
 will certainly be awaited with curiosity." 
 
 The plan thus happily foreshadowed will be immediately 
 inaugurated by the publication of " MERCY PHILBRICK S 
 CHOICE," from the pen of a well-known and successful writer 
 of fiction. 
 
 It is intended to include in the Series a volume of anonymous 
 poems from famous hands, to be written especially for it. 
 
 The " No Name Series " will be issued at convenient inter 
 vals, in handsome library form, i6mo, cloth, price $1.00 each. 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. 
 
 BOSTON, Midsummer, 1876.