of any species of legitimate warfare; the heroes were not
forced to fight for their lives. Far from it. The brawls were bred by
liquor in which they assisted--in saloons and gambling-hells they were
wont to "pull their guns" on a man, and in the vast majority of cases
without provocation. The tales sickened me, but taught one thing. A man
who carries a pistol may be put down as a coward--a person to be shut
out from every decent mess and club, and gathering of civilised folk.
There is neither chivalry nor romance in the weapon, for all that
American authors have seen fit to write. I would I could make you
understand the full measure of contempt with which certain aspects of
Western life have inspired me. Let us try a comparison. Sometimes it
happens that a young, a very young, man, whose first dress-coat is yet
glossy, gets slightly flushed at a dinner-party among his seniors. After
the ladies are gone, he begins to talk. He talks, you will remember, as
a "man of the world" and a person of varied experiences, an authority on
all things human and divine. The grey heads of the elders bow
assentingly to his wildest statement; some one tries to turn the
conversation when what the youngster conceives to be wit has offended a
sensibility; and another deftly slides the decanters beyond him as they
circle round the table. You know the feeling of discomfort--pity mingled
with aversion--over the boy who is making an exhibition of himself. The
same emotion came back to me, when an old man who ought to have known
better appealed from time to time for admiration of his pitiful
sentiments. It was right in his mind to insult, to maim, and to kill;
right to evade the law where it was strong and to trample over it where
it was weak; right to swindle in politics, to lie in affairs of State,
and commit perjury in matters of municipal administration. The car was
full of little children, utterly regardless of their parents, fretful,
peevish, spoilt beyond anything I have ever seen in Anglo-India. They in
time would grow up into men such as sat in the smoker, and had no regard
for the law; men who would conduct papers siding with defiance of any
and every law. But it's of no consequence, as Mr. Toots says.

During the descent of the Rockies we journeyed for a season on a trestle
only two hundred and eighty-six feet high. It was made of iron, but up
till two years ago a wooden structure bore up the train, and was used
long after it had been co