_hate_ it--I hate it, and you needn't look so!"

The senior partner was regarding the rebel with grave-eyed reproach.

"I thought you did," said I. "I don't suppose American girls are much
different from English ones in instinct."

"Isn't it Theophile Gautier who says that the only differences between
country and country lie in the slang and the uniform of the police?"

Now in the name of all the Gods at once, what is one to say to a young
lady (who in England would be a Person) who earns her own bread, and
very naturally hates the employ, and slings out-of-the-way quotations at
your head? That one falls in love with her goes without saying; but that
is not enough.

A mission should be established.

No. XXVI

TAKES ME THROUGH BRET HARTE'S COUNTRY, AND TO PORTLAND WITH "OLD MAN
CALIFORNIA." EXPLAINS HOW TWO VAGABONDS BECAME HOMESICK THROUGH LOOKING
AT OTHER PEOPLE'S HOUSES.

"I walked in the lonesome even,
And who so sad as I,
As I saw the young men and maidens
Merrily passing by?"

San Francisco has only one drawback. 'Tis hard to leave. When like the
pious Hans Breitmann I "cut that city by the sea" it was with regrets
for the pleasant places left behind, for the men who were so clever, and
the women who were so witty, for the "dives," the beer-halls, the
bucket-shops, and the poker-hells where humanity was going to the Devil
with shouting and laughter and song and the rattle of dice-boxes. I
would fain have stayed, but I feared that an evil end would come to me
when my money was all spent and I descended to the street corner. A
voice inside me said: "Get out of this. Go north. Strike for Victoria
and Vancouver. Bask for a day under the shadow of the old flag." So I
set forth from San Francisco to Portland in Oregon, and that was a
railroad run of thirty-six hours.

The Oakland railway terminus, whence all the main lines start, does not
own anything approaching to a platform. A yard with a dozen or more
tracks is roughly asphalted, and the traveller laden with hand-bags
skips merrily across the metals in search of his own particular train.
The bells of half a dozen shunting engines are tolling suggestively in
his ears. If he is run down, so much the worse for him. "When the bell
rings, look out for the locomotive." Long use has made the nation
familiar and even contemptuous towards trains to an extent which God
never intended. Women who in England would gather up their skirts and
s