ed it with pride;
everybody boarded it with pride; and in every eye was the gleam: "This
is the train of trains, and I have my state-room on it." Perhaps I was
ever so slightly disappointed with the dimensions and appointments of
the state-room--I may have been expecting a whole car to myself--but the
general self-conscious smartness of the train reassured me. I wandered
into the observation-car, and saw my particular friend proudly employ
the train-telephone to inform his office that he had caught the train. I
saw also the free supply of newspapers, the library of books, the
typewriting-machine, and the stenographer by its side--all as promised.
And I knew that at the other end of the train was a dining-car, a
smoking-car, and a barber-shop. I picked up the advertising literature
scattered about by a thoughtful Company, and learned therefrom that this
train was not a mere experiment; it was the finished fruit of many
experiments, and that while offering the conveniences of a hotel or a
club, it did with regularity what it undertook to do in the way of
speed and promptness. The pamphlet made good reading!...

I noted that it pleased the Company to run two other very important
trains out of the terminus simultaneously with the unique train.
Bravado, possibly; but bravado which invited the respect of all those
who admire enterprise! I anticipated with pleasure the noble spectacle
of these three trains sailing forth together on three parallel tracks;
which pleasure was denied me. We for Chicago started last; we started
indeed, according to my poor European watch, from fifteen to thirty
seconds late!... No matter! I would not stickle for seconds:
particularly as at Chicago, by the terms of a contract which no company
in Europe would have had the grace to sign, I was to receive, for any
unthinkable lateness, compensation at the rate of one cent for every
thirty-six seconds!

Within a quarter of an hour it became evident that that train had at
least one great quality--it moved. As, in the deepening dusk, we swung
along the banks of the glorious Hudson, veiled now in the vaporous
mysteries following a red sunset, I was obliged to admit with increasing
enthusiasm that that train did move. Even the persecutors of Galileo
would never have had the audacity to deny that that train moved. And one
felt, comfortably, that the whole Company, with all the Company's
resources, was watching over its flying pet, giving it the supreme righ