“C. H. D.,” I replied, with perfect assurance.
I happened to hit on the right line for Brushville.
By this time I know pretty well all those combinations of the alphabet by which the different railroad lines of America are designated.
No hope of comfort or of a dinner to-day. I shall have to change trains three times, but none of them, I am grieved to hear, have parlor cars or dining cars. There is something democratic about uniform cars for all alike. I am a democrat myself, yet I have a weakness for the parlor cars—and the dining cars.
At noon we stopped five minutes at a place which, two years ago, counted six wooden huts. To-day it has more than 5000 inhabitants, the electric light in the streets, a public library, two hotels, four churches, two banks, a public school, a high school, cuspidores, toothpicks, and all the signs of American civilization.
I changed trains at one o’clock at Castle Green Junction. No hotel in the place. I inquired where food could be obtained. A little wooden hut, on the other side of the depot, bearing the inscription “Lunch Room,” was pointed out to me. Lunch in America has not the meaning that it has in England, as I often experienced to my despair. The English are solid people. In England lunch means something. In America, it does not. However, as there was no Beware written outside, I entered the place. Several people were eating pies, fruit pies, pies with crust under, and crust over: sealed mysteries.
| “PEACH POY AND APPLE POY.” |
“I want something to eat,” I said to a man behind the counter, who was in possession of only one eye, and hailed from Old Oireland.
“What ’d ye loike?” replied he, winking with the eye that was not there.
“Well, what have you got?”