Not the smallest fraction of this vast sum, I had resolved, should be squandered on the ephemeral railroads of our younger civilization. My treasury-notes were to be dedicated, green, votive offerings, on the older shrines of our race. But the city of Toledo is situated about seven hundred miles from the sea, and it now became an interesting question how this distance was to be compassed for—nothing.
To a good-natured friend of mine in one of the railroad offices I explained, at considerable length, and with no lack, I flatter myself, of boyish eloquence, the great advantage that would accrue to me from a residence in Europe which the liberality of the companies, in the matter of furnishing passes, would tend to prolong.
I think he became my convert, for he came to me, several hours afterward, with a long face, and gave me to understand that the railroad officials were in the habit of building no dreams of æsthetics that were not founded on a groundplan of dollars and cents.
At this I became—I do not know which to say—desperately vindictive or vindictively desperate. Anyway, the unfeeling conduct of those corporations induced, then and there, a state of mind which led me into an adventure the least calculated, probably, of any in this history to establish my claims as a moral hero. The next morning I brought my trunk down to the depot and had it checked through to New York. The rules seem not to have been so strictly observed then as they are now. The baggage-master in this instance, at least, taking for granted that I had already secured my ticket, did not ask me to show it; and I was at liberty to stroll about the station all day, listlessly.
Just before dusk a cattle-train arrived from the West and brought with it a lucky thought. I scanned the faces of the drovers till I found one that looked benevolent, and the owner of it I engaged in conversation. He was going on East with his cattle the next morning, and I made a plain statement of my case to him. When I had done, he patted me on the back in such a cordial and stalwart manner, that—as soon as I could get my breath—I took it all as a good augury. And so it was.
I wish I could reproduce more of the dialogue which took place between this honest Westerner and myself, at that first interview. Some of it, at least, I never shall forget, it impressed me as so extraordinary at the time. I can, however, convey no idea of the contrast between his mild kindly face and his harsh bovine voice. It may help you to a kind of silhouette view of the situation, if you will take the pains to imagine the frequent excursions of my puzzled attention from his face to his voice, during the scene which immediately followed.
He had given me to understand that he had eight car-loads of live stock, and that he was entitled to a drover’s pass for every four car-loads. Then he suddenly paused, thrust both hands into the pockets of his long-skirted coat, and, feeling about in those spacious alcoves for a silent moment as if in search of something, he asked, in an abrupt bass which seemed to issue from the depths of the coat-tails themselves,—
“How air you—on cattle?”
That was before the days of Mr. Bergh and his excellent society; but, having consulted the speaker’s benevolent face and not his voice, as the last authority on the meaning of his question, I answered that I was very kind to cattle as a general thing.
That, he assured me, was not exactly what he meant; he wanted to know whether I had ever done any “droving.” On my intimating that, although I had not had much experience, I was perfectly willing to be of service, “Never mind, never mind,” he said; “but can you play cards?”