on
any train. An excellent dinner, well and sympathetically served. The
mutton was impeccable. And in another instant, as it seemed, we were
running, with no visible flags, through an important and showy street of
a large town, and surface-cars were crossing one another behind us. I
had never before seen an express train let loose in the middle of an
unprotected town, and I was _naif_ enough to be startled. But a huge
electric sign--"Syracuse bids you welcome"--tranquilized me. We briefly
halted, and drew away from the allurement of those bright streets into
the deep, perilous shade of the open country.

I went to bed. The night differed little from other nights spent in
American sleeping-cars, and I therefore will not describe it in detail.
To do so might amount to a solecism. Enough to say that the jerkings
were possibly less violent and certainly less frequent than usual,
while, on the other hand, the halts were strangely long; one, indeed,
seemed to last for hours; I had to admit to myself that I had been to
sleep and dreamed this stoppage.

From a final cat-nap I at last drew up my blind to greet the oncoming
day, and was rewarded by one of the finest and most poetical views I
have ever seen: a misty, brown river flanked by a jungle of dark reddish
and yellowish chimneys and furnaces that covered it with shifting
canopies of white steam and of smoke, varying from the delicatest grays
to intense black; a beautiful dim gray sky lightening, and on the ground
and low, flat roofs a thin crust of snow: Toledo! A wonderful and
inspiring panorama, just as romantic in its own way as any Spanish
Toledo. Yet I regretted its name, and I regretted the grotesque names of
other towns on the route--Canaan, Syracuse, Utica, Geneva, Ceylon,
Waterloo, and odd combinations ending in "burg." The names of most of
the States are superb. What could be more beautiful than Ohio, Idaho,
Kentucky, Iowa, Missouri, Wyoming, Illinois--above all, Illinois?
Certain cities, too, have grand names. In its vocal quality "Chicago" is
a perfect prince among names. But the majority of town names in America
suffer, no doubt inevitably, from a lack of imagination and of
reflection. They have the air of being bought in haste at a big
advertising "ready-for-service" establishment.

Remembering in my extreme prostration that I was in a hotel and club,
and not in an experiment, I rang the bell, and a smiling negro
presented himself. It was only a quarter t