The cook is named Roland. We have a fine flavor of peers
and paladins among us, you perceive.
"The first day out was cool and delicious, and we had no dust.
At six o'clock we stopped at a junction, and our car was
detached and run off on a siding. This was because Mr. Dayton
had business in the place, and we were to wait and be taken on
by the next express train soon after midnight. At first they ran
us down to a pretty place by the side of the river, where it was
cool, and we could look out on the water and a green bank
opposite, and we thought we were going to have such a nice
night; but the authorities changed their minds, and presently
to our deep disgust a locomotive came puffing down the road,
clawed us up, ran us back, and finally left us in the middle of
innumerable tracks and switches just where all the freight
trains came in and met. All night long they were arriving and
going out. Cars loaded with cattle, cars loaded with sheep, with
pigs! Such bleatings and mooings and gruntings, I never heard in
all my life before. I could think of nothing but that verse in
the Psalms, 'Strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round,' and
could only hope that the poor animals did not feel half as badly
as they sounded.
"Then long before light, as we lay listening to these lamentable
roarings and grunts, and quite unable to sleep for heat and
noise, came the blessed express, and presently we were away out
of all the din, with the fresh air of the prairie blowing in;
and in no time at all we were so sound asleep that it seemed but
a minute before morning.
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