ersation can always be averted by absorption in a
book, or, in a crisis, by pretending to be dumb.

* * *

Not everybody can travel three or four days without exchanging words
with a fellow traveler. Mr. George Moore, for example, would be quite
wretched. Conversation is the breath of his being, he says somewhere. I
understand that Mr. Moore has another book on press, entitled "Avowals."
Avowals! My dear!... After the "Confessions" and the "Memoirs" what in
the world is there left for the man to avow?

* * *

What a delightful fictionist is Moore! And never more delightful than
when he is writing fiction under the appearance of fact. No one has
taken more to heart the axiom that the imaginary is the only real. As my
friend the Librarian observed, the difference between George Moore and
Baron Munchausen is that Moore's lies are interesting.

* * *

Travelers must carry their own reading matter under government
ownership. The club car library now consists of time-tables, maps, and
pamphlets setting forth the never to be forgotten attractions of the
show places along the way. These are all written by the celebrated prose
poet Ibid, and, with a bottle of pseudo beer or lemon pop, help to make
the club car as gay a place as a mortician's parlor on a rainy
afternoon.

* * *

The treeless plateau over which the train rolls, hour after hour, is the
result of a great uplift. It was not sudden; it was slow but sure. This
result is arid and plateautudinous, in a manner of speaking--not the
best manner. It makes me think of democracy--and prohibition. To this
complexion we shall come at last. To be sure, the genius of man will
continue to cut channels in the monotonous plain; erosion will relieve
the dreary prospect with form and color, but it bids fair to be, for the
most part, a flat and dry world, from which many of us will part with a
minimum of regret. There will remain the inextinguishable desire to
learn what wonders science will disclose. Perhaps--who knows?--they will
discover how to ventilate a sleeping car.

* * *

At Albuquerque I remarked a line of Mexicans basking in the sun (having,
perhaps, finished jumping on their mothers). They looked happy--as happy
as the Russian peasants used to be. Men who know Russia tell me that the
peasants really were happy, even under the twin despotisms of Vodka and
Czar. It was n