was so white and glaring, and the pines so grave
and green. I had heard before, from old
travellers, how fond cattle were of sunning
on the unfenced American railroads, and I
remembered how one early circumnavigator,
shortly after Anson, describes the engineer and
stoker amusing themselves all day in pelting
the stray cows with billets from the wood-van.
I was assured that the cow-catcher sometimes
caught them up, but oftener got entangled with
their broken legs, and so upset the train.

Unpleasant, therefore, it was, every twenty
minutes, from Savannah to Charleston, to hear
the droning whistle give notice of another cow,
to feel the train slacken, almost stop— then a
mile of fiercer and more staccato whistling— all
ending in seeing a stolid yet worried cow striding
along off the line into the woods, crashing
through wild vines and butternuts, maple bushes
and sassafras, and blundering over a fallen tree,
and there quietly brandishing a wisp of a tail.

All these and similar thoughts entered my
mind, as I lay on my back on that wicker shelf
of "the American sleeping car," and in vain
offered up prayers to the great black King
Morpheus of the mandragora crown and ebon
sceptre. No, swig-swag goes the car, rush,
jolt, and now I begin to believe the old story of
the stoker and engineer playing at cards all night,
and now and then leaping the train over a "bad
place," crying "Go ahead; let her rip!"

At last, a precarious and fragile sleep crusts
me over, but, compared with real sleep it is but
as the skim of ice on a water-jug compared with
the thick-ribbed buttresses of an Arctic winter.
It is like workhouse food; it keeps life together,
but not amply or luxuriously. So, blessed
daylight reluctantly and sullenly returns. One by
one we wake up, yawn, and stretch ourselves.
There is something suspicious in the haste with
which we all flop out of bed, and no really com-
fortable bed was ever left with such coarse in-
gratitude. Presently, to us enter Zenas and Ezra,
not to mention a fresh passenger from Corfu,
regardless of the somewhat effete atmosphere of
our carriage, and proceed to readjust the seats.

Beds, in a few minutes, will be invisible.
Slide out those wicker trays— strip off the rugs
and cushions— furl back those curtains— ratchet
up to the roof those supporters—push in those
underpinning bolts— click, jolt, they are chair
seats once more. And now, through, the open
windows conies a draught of pure air, that
freshens our frouzy and dishevelled crew.

Now, repair we to the washing-room, and the
one dirty brush fastened to the wall by a chain,
giving the whole place the appearance of the
cell of a dead barber. We wash with scanty
rinsings of water, always tilted up at one corner
of the basin, as if we were in the desert and
water was scarce on "t'other side of Jordan."
I don't feel as if I had washed, or as if I had
been asleep, but that is of no consequence: I
feel tired, flabby, dusty, grimy, and low.

Let me, however, before I get to the breakfast
station, still half a mile off, remember to
mention that the second time I took a railway
sleeping car I really did sleep, and the third time I
slept well. So much for habit; and, indeed, to
commercial men, and men bound on swift
unpostponable journeys, these sleeping cars are a
great comfort and convenience: though in Canada
(with a different tempered people) they have
been tried and failed.

But now the great bell on the engine, clashes
and swings; the deep-toned whistle, more like
a bassoon than the ear-piercing screamer we use,
sounds in angry gasps; we are near Buffalo,
and breakfast.

We slacken and stop; and out we pour in
hungry swarms. The five gongs of five opposition
breakfast places, bang and thunder for our
custom; five niggers at once cry:

"This way please, jebblemen, for de breakfuss!
Half-dollar a ed!"

In a minute I am seated with some thirty
other hungry souls, stowing away white piles of
hominy, pink shavings of corned beef, and bowls
of stewed oysters. What time, a negro boy
waves a plume brush of wild turkey feathers
over my head, to keep off the greedy American
flies, who are all republicans to a fly.

A DAY'S RIDE: A LIFE'S ROMANCE.
CHAPTER XXXIII.

Respectable reader, there is no use in asking
you if you have ever been in the Hotel of the
"Balance," at Constance. Of course you have
not. It is neither recorded in the book of John,
nor otherwise known to fame. It is an obscure
hostel, only visited by the very humblest
wayfarers, and such poor offshoots of wretchedness as
are fain to sleep on a truckle-bed and sup meanly.
Vaterchen, however, spoke of it in generous
terms. There was a certain oniony soup he had
tasted there years ago whose flavour had not yet
left his memory. He had seen, besides, the most
delicious schweine fleisch hanging down from the
kitchen rafters, and it had been revealed to him
in a dream that a solvent traveller might have
rashers on demand.

Poor fellow! I had not the vaguest idea of the
eloquence he possessed till he came to talk on
these matters. From modest and distrustful, he
grew assured and confident; his hesitation of
speech was replaced by a fluent utterance and a
rich vocabulary; and he repeatedly declared that
though the exterior was unprepossessing, and the
service generally homely, there were substantial
comforts obtainable which far surpassed the
resources of more pretentious houses. "You are
served on pewter, it is true," said he; "but
pewter is a rare material to impart relish to a
savoury mess." Though we should dine in the
kitchen, he gave me to understand that even in
this there were advantages, and that the polite
guest of the salon never knew what it was to
taste that rich odour of the "roast," or that
fragrant incense that steamed up from the luscious
stew, and which were to cookery what bouquet
was to wine.

"I will not I say that, honoured sir,"