be filled with
little parties breakfasting upon the bed-boards. It was the pleasantest
hour of the day.

There were meals to be had, however, by the wayside; a breakfast in the
morning, a dinner somewhere between eleven and two, and supper from
five to eight or nine at night. We had rarely less than twenty minutes
for each; and if we had not spent many another twenty minutes waiting
for some express upon a side track among many miles of desert, we might
have taken an hour to each repast and arrived at San Francisco up to
time. For haste is not the foible of an emigrant train. It gets through
on sufferance, running the gauntlet among its more considerable
brethren; should there be a block, it is unhesitatingly sacrificed; and
they cannot, in consequence, predict the length of the passage within a
day or so. Civility is the main comfort that you miss. Equality, though
conceived very largely in America, does not extend so low down as to an
emigrant. Thus in all other trains, a warning cry of "All aboard!"
recalls the passengers to take their seats; but as soon as I was alone
with emigrants, and from the Transfer all the way to San Francisco, I
found this ceremony was pretermitted; the train stole from the station
without note of warning, and you had to keep an eye upon it even while
you ate. The annoyance is considerable, and the disrespect both wanton
and petty.

Many conductors, again, will hold no communication with an emigrant. I
asked a conductor one day at what time the train would stop for dinner;
as he made no answer I repeated the question, with a like result; a
third time I returned to the charge, and then Jack-in-office looked me
coolly in the face for several seconds and turned ostentatiously away. I
believe he was half ashamed of his brutality; for when another person
made the same inquiry, although he still refused the information, he
condescended to answer, and even to justify his reticence in a voice
loud enough for me to hear. It was, he said, his principle not to tell
people where they were to dine; for one answer led to many other
questions, as what o'clock it was? or, how soon should we be there? and
he could not afford to be eternally worried.

As you are thus cut off from the superior authorities, a great deal of
your comfort depends on the character of the newsboy. He has it in his
power indefinitely to better and brighten the emigrant's lot. The
newsboy with whom we started from the Transfer was