"Thank you very much," she answered. "I hope you'll come again."
"I hope so too."
Then we said good-by. And though I cannot say of the angel-voiced Miss Maguire that she taught me about women, she did teach me something about writers, and something else about hotels.
I had always fancied that an unbroken flight across the continent would prove fatiguing and seem very, very long, but however others may have found it, it seemed short to me.
Looking back over the run from the Pacific Coast to Chicago I feel as though it had consumed but a night and one long, interesting day—a day full of changing scenes and episodes. The three things I remember best about the journey are the beauty of the Bad Lands, the wonderful squab guinea chicken I had, one night, for dinner, in the dining car, and the pretty girl with the demure expression and the mischievous blue eyes, who, before coming aboard at a little western station, kissed a handsome young cattleman good-by, and who, having later made friends with a gay young blade upon the train, kissed him good-by, also, when they parted on the platform in Chicago.
Railroad travel in the West does not seem so machine-like as in the East. That is true in many ways. West of Chicago you do not feel that your train is sandwiched in between two other trains, one just ahead, the other just behind. You run for a long time without passing another train, and when you do pass one, it is something in the nature of an event, like passing another ship, at sea. So, also, on the train, the relations between passengers and crew are not merely mechanical. You feel that the conductor is a human being, and that the dining-car conductor is distinctly a nice fellow.
But once you pass Chicago, going east, the individuality of train officials ceases to be felt. They become automatons, very efficient, but cold as cogs in a machine. As for you, you are a unit, to be transported and fed, and they do transport and feed you, doing it all impartially and impersonally, performing their duties with the most rigid decorum, and the most cold-blooded correctness.
