land towns full of elm trees
and oldline Republicans; from the Middle States; and from the land of
chewing tobacco, prominent Adam's apples and hot biscuits--down where
the r is silent, as in No'th Ca'lina. And all of us--Northerners,
Southerners, Easterners alike--were actuated by a common purpose--we
were going West to see the country and rough it--rough it on overland
trains better equipped and more luxurious than any to be found in the
East; rough it at ten-dollar-a-day hotels; rough it by touring car over
the most magnificent automobile roads to be found on this continent. We
were a daring lot and resolute; each and every one of us was brave and
blithe to endure the privations that such an expedition must inevitably
entail. Let the worst come; we were prepared! If there wasn't any of the
hothouse lamb, with imported green peas, left, we'd worry along on a
little bit of the fresh shad roe, and a few conservatory cucumbers on
the side. That's the kind of hardy adventurers we were!

Conspicuous among us was a distinguished surgeon of Chicago; in fact,
so distinguished that he has had a very rare and expensive disease
named for him, which is as distinguished as a physician ever gets to be
in this country. Abroad he would be decorated or knighted. Here we name
something painful after him and it seems to fill the bill just as well.
This surgeon was very distinguished and also very exclusive. After you
scaled down from him, riding in solitary splendor in his drawing room,
with kitbags full of symptoms and diagnoses scattered round, we became a
mixed tourist outfit. I would not want to say that any of the persons on
our train were impossible, because that sounds snobbish; but I will say
this--some of them were highly improbable.

There was the bride, who put on her automobile goggles and her
automobile veil as soon as we pulled out of the Chicago yards and never
took them off again--except possibly when sleeping. I presume she wanted
to show the rest of us that she was accustomed to traveling at a high
rate of speed. If the bridegroom had only bethought him to carry one of
those siren horns under his arm, and had tooted it whenever we went
around a curve, the illusion would have been complete.

There was also the middle-aged lady with the camera habit. Any time the
train stopped, or any time it behaved as though it thought of stopping,
out on the platform would pop this lady, armed with her little
accordion-plaited camer