DISSATISFIED PASSENGERS.
Any one wanting a fair and yet amusing account of what really occurs to a person travelling in America should read G. A. Sala’s book called America Revisited. He speaks of a gentleman from the Eastern States whom he met in the train across the continent, and who thus held forth upon the difference between reality and guide-books:—
“There ain’t no bottling up of things about me. This overland journey’s a fraud, and you oughter know it. Don’t tell me. It’s a fraud. This Ring must be busted up. Where are your buffalers? Perhaps you’ll tell me that them cows is buffalers. They ain’t. Where are your prairie dogs? They ain’t dogs to begin with, they’re squirrels. Ain’t you ashamed to call the mean little cusses dogs? But where are they? There ain’t none. Where are your grizzlies? You might have imported a few grizzlies
to keep up the name of your railroad. Where are your herds of antelopes scudding before the advancing train? Nary an antelope have you got for to scud. Rocky Mountains, sir? They ain’t rocky at all—they’re as flat as my hand. Where are your savage gorges? I can’t see none. Where are your wild injuns? Do you call them loafing tramps in dirty blankets, injuns? My belief is that they are greasers looking out for an engagement as song and dance men. They’re ‘beats,’ sir, ‘dead beats,’ they’re ‘pudcocks,’ and you oughter be told so.”
Another passenger in the train with Mr. Sala was of a poetic mind, and he softly sang to himself during the whole journey over the Rocky Mountains the following effusion:—
Beautiful snow,
Beautiful snow,
B-e-e-e-eautiful snow,
How I’d like to have a revolver and go
For the beast that wrote about beautiful snow.