But on the subject of cross-continent freight, by which many people may want to ship their cars home, the Transcontinental Freight Company’s offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, etc., have a special rate for through shipment of automobiles that is a very good thing to know about. They ship three automobiles in one freight car, and for cars weighing 4,500 pounds and over, they charge a maximum rate of $225.00, or $5.50 a hundred pounds, from New York to San Francisco or vice versa. A car weighing 3,000 pounds would cost $165.00.
The sole objection to this consolidated car load shipment is that they only send out the cars when they have three auto consignments, and you may have to wait a few days for the other two car spaces to be filled. Also their service is only between the most important terminal points. If you live somewhere in the middle distance between these terminal cities, it might be cheaper, as well as more convenient, to ship by regular railroad freight.
SOME DAY
Some day we are going back. Celia, E. M., and I have planned it. We must have plenty of time, and take our whole families with us, so that she will not have to hurry home to a husband, and I will not have to rush on without pause, in order to get home to a younger son. When we go again, we are going in two cars—one to help the other in case of need, and, if possible, a third car to carry a camping outfit—and camp! Celia and I both hate camping, so this proves the change that can come over you as you go out into the West. I say “out into,” because I don’t in the least mean being tunneled through on a limited train! The steel-walled Pullman carefully preserves for you the attitude you started with. Plunging into an uninhabited land is not unlike plunging into the surf. A first shock! To which you quickly become accustomed, and find invigoratingly delicious. Why difficulties seem to disappear; and why that magic land leaves you afterwards with a persistent longing to go back, I can’t explain; I only know that it is true.
The taste we had of the desert has something so appealing in the reminiscence of its harsh immensity by day, its velvet mystery at night—if only we might have gone further into it! We couldn’t then and now it is lost to us, three thousand miles away!
FOOTNOTES
[1] [See Map No. 1, page 285.]
[2] One of the lovely white ones is the Garfield house, where the President’s widow still lives.