hern train to be so much behind, the ferry-boat would
have plenty of time to take us across and return, was of no avail, so,
like a cargo of "moo-cows" (as the children say), we submitted meekly. In
order to make the time pass more pleasantly for the two hundred people
gathered on the boat, a dusky potentate judged the moment appropriate to
scrub the cabin floors. So, aided by a couple of subordinates, he
proceeded to deluge the entire place in floods of water, obliging us to
sit with our feet tucked up under us, splashing the ladies' skirts and
our wraps and belongings.

Such treatment of the public would have raised a riot anywhere but in
this land of freedom. Do you suppose any one murmured? Not at all. The
well-trained public had the air of being in church. My neighbors
appeared astonished at my impatience, and informed me that they were
often detained in that way, as the company was short of boats, but they
hoped to have a new one in a year or two. This detail did not prevent
that corporation advertising our train to arrive in New York at three-
thirteen, instead of which we landed at four o'clock. If a similar
breach of contract had happened in England, a dozen letters would have
appeared in the "Times," and the grievance been well aired.

Another infliction to which all who travel in America are subjected is
the brushing atrocity. Twenty minutes before a train arrives at its
destination, the despot who has taken no notice of any one up to this
moment, except to snub them, becomes suspiciously attentive and insists
on brushing everybody. The dirt one traveller has been accumulating is
sent in clouds into the faces of his neighbors. When he is polished off
and has paid his "quarter" of tribute, the next man gets up, and the dirt
is then brushed back on to number one, with number two's collection
added.

Labiche begins one of his plays with two servants at work in a salon.
"Dusting," says one of them, "is the art of sending the dirt from the
chair on the right over to the sofa on the left." I always think of that
remark when I see the process performed in a parlor car, for when it is
over we are all exactly where we began. If a man should shampoo his
hair, or have his boots cleaned in a salon, he would be ejected as a
boor; yet the idea apparently never enters the heads of those who soil
and choke their fellow-passengers that the brushing might be done in the
vestibule.

On the subject of fresh air