elf apologised, as if to show him the
way, he answered me never a word. I chafed furiously, and I fear the
next time it would have come to words. But suddenly I felt a touch upon
my shoulder, and a large juicy pear was put into my hand. It was the
newsboy, who had observed that I was looking ill, and so made this
present out of a tender heart. For the rest of the journey I was petted
like a sick child; he lent me newspapers, thus depriving himself of his
legitimate profit on their sale, and came repeatedly to sit by me and
cheer me up.

THE PLAINS OF NEBRASKA

It had thundered on the Friday night, but the sun rose on Saturday
without a cloud. We were at sea--there is no other adequate
expression--on the plains of Nebraska. I made my observatory on the top
of a fruit-waggon, and sat by the hour upon that perch to spy about me,
and to spy in vain for something new. It was a world almost without a
feature; an empty sky, an empty earth; front and back, the line of
railway stretched from horizon to horizon, like a cue across a
billiard-board; on either hand, the green plain ran till it touched the
skirts of heaven. Along the track innumerable wild sunflowers, no bigger
than a crown-piece, bloomed in a continuous flower-bed; grazing beasts
were seen upon the prairie at all degrees of distance and diminution;
and now and again we might perceive a few dots beside the railroad which
grew more and more distinct as we drew nearer, till they turned into
wooden cabins, and then dwindled and dwindled in our wake until they
melted into their surroundings, and we were once more alone upon the
billiard-board. The train toiled over this infinity like a snail; and
being the one thing moving, it was wonderful what huge proportions it
began to assume in our regard. It seemed miles in length, and either end
of it within but a step of the horizon. Even my own body or my own head
seemed a great thing in that emptiness. I note the feeling the more
readily as it is the contrary of what I have read of in the experience
of others. Day and night, above the roar of the train, our ears were
kept busy with the incessant chirp of grasshoppers--a noise like the
winding up of countless clocks and watches, which began after a while
to seem proper to that land.

To one hurrying through by steam there was a certain exhilaration in
this spacious vacancy, this greatness of the air, this discovery of the
whole arch of heaven,