mine
and the glass was removed.

"Sorry, but we're in another proclaimed State now!"

I prayed that one of these fiendish faddists might enter the car at that
moment. I passed a solemn resolution that I would pour all the contents
of the cruets down his cursed throat and make hideous caricatures of
him all over the wine list!

More wooden houses and their wooden-headed occupants were passed, and at
last I was at liberty to have a drink.

Ice is not of necessity pure nor wine impure. If these ignorant fools
are unable to drink without proving to the world that Nature intended
them for beasts, it is no reason why they should make laws for their
betters, particularly for the stranger flying through their country,
which they misappropriately call free.

Again I hark back to the laying of railway lines, which I repeat we
manage better in England than they do in the States. The sleeper in his
berth in an American car is tossed up and down to such an extent that
his vocabulary is exhausted in anathematising the sleepers under the
rails. It doesn't seem as if the Transatlantic lines are ever going to
adopt our thorough system of track-laying. I met a railway expert on the
boat going out who had been to England to inspect officially the laying
of a railway, and he assured me that if they were to take up all the
tracks in America and relay them in our way it would financially break
them, enormously rich as the railway kings of the States are.

[Illustration: SLEEP(!)]

I must candidly say I don't care about sleeping in those cars. The heat
can be avoided by paying extra and having a coupe to yourself, or
sharing it with a friend, as I did. My first experience was on that
journey from Chicago which I mentioned before, and I shall never forget
it. I had at the last moment to take the only berth left, and it
happened to be a top one. I was the last to retire that night, and my
struggles to climb to my perch were so ludicrous that I was glad there
were no spectators. I placed my handbags, hat-boxes, &c., one on top of
another, and mounted them as cautiously as an acrobat ascending a
pyramid of decanters, and scrambled in. I then proceeded to divest
myself of my articles of clothing. I noticed that the snoring of the
gentleman in the berth underneath grew softer and somewhat stifled, and
as I wound up my watch and placed it, as I thought, under the pillow, he
jumped frantically out from behind his curtains and went head over