II.
I am taking my wife and two girls to Baltimore for the Christmas week. Last year we had our Christmas dinner with Irving. This year he has said, “Let us all sup together. The theatres are open on Christmas day; we must, therefore, have our pudding for supper after we have seen the last of poor old Louis.”
“Awkward night for ladies getting to the ‘Maryland,’” says the guide.
They are well provided with cloaks and furs and snow-boots, or rubbers (an absolute necessity and a great comfort in America), and we all push along after the guide, across the departure platform, into the snowy night,—the flakes fall in blinding clouds; over railway tracks which men are clearing,—the white carpet soft and yielding; between freight-cars, through open sheds,—the girls enjoying it all, as only young people can enjoy a snow-storm.
The flickering light of our guide’s lantern is at length eclipsed by the radiance of a well-illuminated cabin.
“This is the office; you can wait here; they’ll tell you when the ‘Maryland’s’ reported.”
A snug room, with a great stove in the centre. The men who are sitting around it move to make way for us. They do not disguise their surprise at the arrivals: an English family (one of them very young, with her hair blowing about her face), with snow enough falling from their cloaks to supply material for a snow-balling match. We are evidently regarded as novel visitors. Track laborers and others follow us in. They carry lamps, and their general appearance recalls the mining scene in “The Danites,” at the London Olympic. Our entrance seems as much of a surprise to the others as the arrival of “the school-marm” was to the men in the Californian bar-room.
Presently a smart official (not unlike a guard of the Midland Railway in England as to his uniform) enters. There is a swing in his gait and a lamp in his hand, as a smart writer might put it.
“That gentleman will tell you all about the train,” says one of the Danites, speaking in the shadow of the stove.