vice.--Nearing Home.--Parting Thoughts.--Our
Amusements.--To Ethel Asleep.--A Parting Wish.--Pilgrimages of
Patriotism 194

A FLIGHT IN SPRING

I

The Circumstances of the Flight.--The Start.--The Car "Lucania."--The
Kitchen.--The Cook.--The Poetic Dinner.--Our Accommodations.--Visitors
at Newark.--Improvised Theatricals.--Philadelphia, Wilmington,
Baltimore, Washington.--The Approaching War Crisis.

It seemed like a dream to be invited to join a party on a private
Pullman car for an extended tour of close on eight thousand miles, all
in these our United States! Yet such was the opportunity which was
generously offered us in this springtime of 1898.

It was to be "A Flight in Spring" of most intense interest. The journey
was to embrace in its continued circuit, from New York back to New
York, points as widely separated as New Orleans and San Francisco. It
was to traverse many States and Territories, and was to be accomplished
with every adjunct of unstinted comfort and refinement.

The expected morning when we were to start on our journey came at last,
with that subdued wonder in it that the dream, so unlooked for, was
really to be a fact. Bags and satchels were all packed, and with that
happy feeling which always comes to the tourist when, all ready, he is
safely ensconced in his cab, we sped to the Twenty-third Street ferry
for the Pennsylvania depot in Jersey City.

Never did the great Hudson River look so beautiful or New York so
magnificent in our eyes as on that early morning of April 13th, when,
through and beyond it all, we could see in imagination the great
journey before us, all made more radiant by a munificent hospitality
which had made it for us a fact--"A Flight in Spring"--which we had
often thought of, but never hoped to see.

To start off on such a journey, with a six weeks' vacation in view,
even if undertaken all alone and in most prosaic economy, would be an
event; but when one was met by pleasant friends and ushered into an
independent, self-contained flying home on wheels, it was indeed
something ideal.

Our car, the "Lucania," was a happy combination of well-devised space
and comfortable arrangement. Let us recount its good points. We may as
well begin with the foundation of all well-regulated homes, the
kitchen. What a _multum in parvo_ that sacred spot was! It held quite a
substantial cooking range; it had lockers an