L'islet, P. Q., Canada, September 15th.
My Dear Papa: I hope you are well, and that business will soon steer towards prosperity. When you left me in the car, I had to wait about three minutes, then I felt the train start.
As it gained speed, we darted through about fifty little tunnels, and between stone walls.
When we got into Connecticut, we passed a series of little bays, which I afterwards found out were the inlets of the sound. We made our first stop at Meriden, where a crowd of New England girls got on the train; they wore neat golf suits and carried golf sticks. I thought how nice Cousin Madge would look in such clothes. None of them were pretty, but all were as neat as new pins. All along the railroad was to be seen "ads" of pills, bicycles, soap and sarsaparilla.
As we pulled into Hartford, we passed the Pope Manufacturing Company, but it does not resemble the fine pictures they have in their "ads."
I only got out of the seat you put me into once, and that was to get a drink. When I got into Springfield, that baggage man was nowhere to be found, neither was the conductor, so I gave the brakeman the cigars you left for them.
The brakeman then took me to the conductor of the Pullman car; this fellow looked the image of me, only taller, and he greeted me heartily when he found that I was to be in his charge.
I bought sandwiches here, and it's lucky I did, as the roast chicken Mamma put up for me, only did for one meal; it was so good, I couldn't stop eating once I began it.
When I got on the train, it was made up of one baggage, two day and three sleeping coaches, but when I awoke in the morning, or really in the night, to my surprise I found that we had changed from the middle to the end of the train. Now, for the incidents of the night. About 9.30 P. M. I got Billy, the porter, to make up my berth and I went to sleep after a hard tussle with the rough sheets and blanket. At one o'clock, I was dreaming of home and of mother, as the song says, when all of a sudden I heard our village fire whistle blow—I jumped out of bed, and then found to my disappointment that I was five hundred miles from home in a Pullman sleeper that had bumped into something, and every one was making a racket enough to wake the dead. We got another engine after twenty minutes solo, and continued our journey through the high mountains of Vermont. I dozed again and when I awoke, daylight was just peeping out from the east; the frost was on every blade of grass and on every rail and tie; the trees seemed to draw the steam from the engine with their leaves, and then it became a thin veil of frost; thus while standing on the back platform at 4.50 A. M., I could see our route for miles and miles, winding and meandering through the forests of the Pine Tree State.