e made
yourself a present of five cents' worth of postage-stamps into the
bargain. Benjamin Franklin would have patted me on the head for this
discovery.

From Toano we travelled all day through deserts of alkali and sand,
horrible to man, and bare sage-brush country that seemed little
kindlier, and came by supper-time to Elko. As we were standing, after
our manner, outside the station, I saw two men whip suddenly from
underneath the cars, and take to their heels across country. They were
tramps, it appeared, who had been riding on the beams since eleven of
the night before; and several of my fellow-passengers had already seen
and conversed with them while we broke our fast at Toano. These land
stowaways play a great part over here in America, and I should have
liked dearly to become acquainted with them.

At Elko an odd circumstance befell me. I was coming out from supper,
when I was stopped by a small, stout, ruddy man, followed by two others
taller and ruddier than himself.

"Ex-cuse me, sir," he said, "but do you happen to be going on?"

I said I was, whereupon he said he hoped to persuade me to desist from
that intention. He had a situation to offer me, and if we could come to
terms, why, good and well. "You see," he continued, "I'm running a
theatre here, and we're a little short in the orchestra. You're a
musician, I guess?"

I assured him that, beyond a rudimentary acquaintance with "Auld Lang
Syne" and "The Wearing of the Green," I had no pretension whatever to
that style. He seemed much put out of countenance; and one of his taller
companions asked him, on the nail, for five dollars.

"You see, sir," added the latter to me, "he bet you were a musician; I
bet you weren't. No offence, I hope?"

"None whatever," I said, and the two withdrew to the bar, where I
presume the debt was liquidated.

This little adventure woke bright hopes in my fellow-travellers, who
thought they had now come to a country where situations went a-begging.
But I am not so sure that the offer was in good faith. Indeed, I am more
than half persuaded it was but a feeler to decide the bet.

Of all the next day I will tell you nothing, for the best of all
reasons, that I remember no more than that we continued through desolate
and desert scenes, fiery hot and deadly weary. But some time after I had
fallen asleep that night, I was awakened by one of my companions. It was
in vain that I resisted. A fire of enthusiasm and whisky burne