the uniform excellence of the dining-car
service.

It is a powerfully hard thing for a man to project his personality
across the grave. In making their wills and providing for the carrying
on of their pet enterprises a number of our richest men have endeavored
from time to time to disprove this; but, to date, the percentage of
successes has not been large. So far as most of us are concerned the
burden of proof shows that in this regard we are one with the famous
little dog whose name was Rover--when we die, we die all over. Every big
success represents the personality of a living man; rarely ever does it
represent the personality of a dead man.

The original Fred Harvey is dead--has been dead, in fact, for several
years; but his spirit goes marching on across the southwestern half of
this country. Two thousand miles from salt water, the oysters that are
served on his dining cars do not seem to be suffering from car-sickness.
And you can get a beefsteak measuring eighteen inches from tip to tip.
There are spring chickens with the most magnificent bust development I
ever saw outside of a burlesque show; and the eggs taste as though they
might have originated with a hen instead of a cold-storage vault. If
there was only a cabaret show going up and down the middle of the car
during meals, even the New York passengers would be satisfied with the
service, I think.

There is another detail of the Harvey system that makes you wonder. Out
on the desert, in a dead-gray expanse of silence and sagebrush, your
train halts at a junction point that you never even heard of before.
There is not much to be seen--a depot, a 'dobe cabin or so, a few frame
shacks, a few natives, a few Indians and a few incurably languid
Mexicans--and that is positively all there is except that, right out
there in the middle of nowhere, stands a hotel big enough and handsome
enough for Chicago or New York, built in the Spanish style, with wide
patios and pergolas--where a hundred persons might perg at one time--and
gay-striped awnings. It is flanked by flower-beds and refreshingly
green strips of lawn, with spouting fountains scattered about.

You go inside to a big, spotlessly bright dining room and get as good a
meal as you can get anywhere on earth--and served in as good style, too.
To the man fresh from the East, such an establishment reminds him
vividly of the hurry-up railroad lunch places to which he has been
accustomed back home--places where the