MY HOME IN MARION,
the best spot on earth for me to rest. I thought. Every day my mail was sent me and after a rest of one day, I went to writing letters and in a little while, I found myself planning campaigns and arranging my plans of work for months ahead. The month was soon gone and I returned to the office but little benefitted. I have determined that shall not occur again. I hope I will not receive a business letter for a month. Don't get it into your mind, kind reader, that I am sick or broken down. I am all right—never felt better than I do this morning of January 15th; but I am sure I will be better and stronger after this month's rest.
BUT LET ME BEGIN WITH MY TRIP.
George Ely, of Montgomery, the Traveling Passenger Agent of the Southern Pacific, is one of the cleverest railroad men in all the South. I have been telling him of this trip for years: "All right, when you get ready, let me know, and I will load you up," said he, after every talk. Sure enough he did. "Through Story Land to Sunset Skies," is the striking name of a book he gave me. A couple of old travelers who are supposed to have passed this way years ago before there was any thought of a railroad, takes a girl and her papa into their party and start for San Francisco on the Limited. First one and then the other talks. In those far-off days, they must have camped for months at every point, for they know the history of every section and places of interest.
Their "Limited" seems to have been an unlimited, as to time, for the narrative takes you leisurely from point to point. It is invaluable to the party who takes the trip and I am the only one who seems to possess one in the car.
"Where are we?" "Wonder what there is here?" "I declare it is the driest dullest trip I ever took." These are some of the expressions I have heard. I haven't time to tell them about things. I wish I had, for it is such a pity for people to take the long trip and get so little out of it. One old sister, I fear, will worry herself sick.
The great
DRY DOCK
lately built by the government and brought by sea from New York to New Orleans, was all the talk. "What sort of a looking thing is a dry dock?" I asked one of my friends. "We'll go out tomorrow and see it," was the reply. It's wonderful to think of a machine like that with power to lift the man-of-war, "Illinois," the biggest vessel in the navy, clear out of the water. "The biggest dry dock in the world," said my friend. It is wonderful how many "biggest things in the world" one meets in traveling. I have passed near "the biggest salt mines," "the biggest hunting and fishing ground," "the biggest bridge in the world," "the biggest sugar refinery." I don't know how many "biggest things in the world" there are ahead of me, but that dry dock and the battleship Illinois, are big things, for sure.