More wooden houses and their wooden-headed occupants were passed, and at last I was at liberty to have a drink.
Ice is not of necessity pure nor wine impure. If these ignorant fools are unable to drink without proving to the world that Nature intended them for beasts, it is no reason why they should make laws for their betters, particularly for the stranger flying through their country, which they misappropriately call free.
Again I hark back to the laying of railway lines, which I repeat we manage better in England than they do in the States. The sleeper in his berth in an American car is tossed up and down to such an extent that his vocabulary is exhausted in anathematising the sleepers under the rails. It doesn't seem as if the Transatlantic lines are ever going to adopt our thorough system of track-laying. I met a railway expert on the boat going out who had been to England to inspect officially the laying of a railway, and he assured me that if they were to take up all the tracks in America and relay them in our way it would financially break them, enormously rich as the railway kings of the States are.
SLEEP(!)
I must candidly say I don't care about sleeping in those cars. The heat can be avoided by paying extra and having a coupé to yourself, or sharing it with a friend, as I did. My first experience was on that journey from Chicago which I mentioned before, and I shall never forget it. I had at the last moment to take the only berth left, and it happened to be a top one. I was the last to retire that night, and my struggles to climb to my perch were so ludicrous that I was glad there were no spectators. I placed my handbags, hat-boxes, &c., one on top of another, and mounted them as cautiously as an acrobat ascending a pyramid of decanters, and scrambled in. I then proceeded to divest myself of my articles of clothing. I noticed that the snoring of the gentleman in the berth underneath grew softer and somewhat stifled, and as I wound up my watch and placed it, as I thought, under the pillow, he jumped frantically out from behind his curtains and went head over heels amongst my improvised steps. Then I began to realise what had happened. I had not understood the mechanism of the arrangements, and under the impression that I was placing my clothes, &c., on the ledge, I was in reality dropping them on to the unfortunate occupant of the nether berth, hence the muffled snoring, and when my forty guinea repeater descended upon some unprotected portion of his cranium it put the closure on his dreams in a most abrupt manner.
When you are introduced to an Englishman he invariably invites you to eat something. "You must come and dine with us quietly at home, don't-cher-know," or "I must rig up a dinner for you at the club some night," &c. A Scotchman suggests your drinking something—urges upon you the claims of the Mountain Dew; a Frenchman wishes at once to show you something, the Bois de Boulogne or the Arc de Triomphe; a German desires you to smoke something; an Italian to buy something; and an Australian to kill something, but an American wants an opinion "right away."
"Waal, sur, what do you think of our gre—e—eat country? What do you think of this wonderful city? What do you think of the Amurrican gurl?"
This latter is a question which one is asked in the States morning, noon, and night.
To endeavour to effect a compromise by admitting that she is quite as charming as the English girl, as pretty—though of course of a different type—still equally charming, is a waste of time. You will be met with the commonplace "Get out!" and an added enquiry, "Now don't you think she's just the most fascinating and lovely creature on this earth, and by comparison with your English girls ain't she just sweet?"