f valor in old romantic tales. Urchins,
small mountaineers, more picturesquely clad than anything seen in Alpine
Italy, even, now offer us little baskets of wild strawberries at ten
copecks a basket-strawberries they and their little brothers and sisters
have gathered this very morning at the foot of the hills. The cuisine at
the lunch-counters embraces fresh trout from neighboring mountain
streams, caught by vagrant Mingrelian Isaac Waltons, who bring them in on
strings of plaited grass to sell.

Humorous scenes sometimes enliven our stops at the stations. The Russian
warnings for travellers to seek the train before it is everlastingly too
late cover fully a minute of time. First come three raps of a bell
suspended on the platform, afterward a station employe blows a little
whistle, and lastly comes a toot from the engine itself, by way of an
ultimatum. Once this afternoon a woman leaves the train to enter the
waiting-room for something. Just as she is entering, the station-man
rings the bell. The woman, evidently unaccustomed to railway travel,
rushes hastily back to the train. Everybody greets her performance with
good-natured merriment. Finding the train not pulling out, and encouraged
by some of the passengers, the woman ventures to try it again. As she
reaches the waiting-room door, the station-man blows a shrill blast on
his whistle. The woman rushes back, as before. Again the people laugh,
and again words of encouragement tempt her to venture back again. This
time it is the toot of the engine that brings that poor female scurrying
back across the platform amid the unsympathetic laughter of her
fellow-passengers, and this time the train really starts. From this it
would appear that too many signals are quite as objectionable at
railway-stations as not signals enough. Every stoppage at a lunch-counter
station, or where venders of things edible come on the platform, gives us
opportunity to turn our minds judicially upon the civilization of our
fellow first-class passengers. They present a curious combination of
French fashion and polite address, on the one hand, and want of taste and
ignorance of civilization's usages on the other. Gentlemen and ladies,
dressed in the latest Parisian fashions, stand out on the platform and
devour German sausage or dig their teeth into big chunks of yellow cheese
with the gusto of half-starved barbarians.

We double our engines--our compact, tenderless, petroleum-burning
engines--a