Liquor Law—Kansas Academy of Science—An Incident of Travel—A Parting Symposium—Life in the Cars—St. Louis to New York.
June 19th.—Still on the rolling prairies; in the country of compulsory abstinence—the paradise of Sir Wilfred Lawson. At 9.30 A.M. the train stopped at Newton, 431 miles from Pueblo, and 281 from Kansas.
Here a phenomenon—there was a man by the road side who walked with unsteady step, whose legs tottered, and who lurched violently as he came down the road at that early hour. "He is a sick man," observed one of my friends in the train; "that gentleman has been taking medicine." In the Kansas Act there is a clause enabling physicians, in case of need, to order stimulants for the patients without penalty; but I am told the doctors have generally refused to act upon that permission, so I suppose our friend had been consulting an unlicensed practitioner.
It would be ill done, when I am anxious to acknowledge the pleasure and profit which I derived from my passage through the State, if I did not record the satisfaction with which I perused a volume of the "Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science," which by accident I picked up at one of the stations. The very name speaks trumpet-tongued for the progress which has been made in this wild region. The year before last, the twelfth annual meeting of the Academy was held in Topeka, and I find amongst the list of papers read such subjects as these:—The Kansas Lepidoptera; Kansas Minerals; the Mounds of Southern Kansas; Recent additions to Kansas Plants; Kansas Botany; Kansas Meteorites; Phonetic representations of Indian Language; Sinkholes; Elementary Sounds of Language; Mound-builders; On Recent Indian Discoveries. And among the lecturers there was Professor B. F. Mudge, who died last year, whose name probably is known to a very limited number of scientific men outside the University of Kansas. Generally the papers contributed by the gentlemen of the State attest industry and attainments which make their praise of the Professor particularly valuable. It is curious enough to pick up in a railway carriage, traversing such a scene of comparative wildness and vast uninhabited plains in Western Kansas, an exceedingly interesting examination of the Helmholtz theories of sight. The object of the lecturer would scarcely be suspected by the reader. We had already been struck by the extraordinary absence of signalmen, or of any of the complex apparatus of men and machinery which may be seen in Europe, and notably in England, to report the progress of trains on the lines. Collisions, however, occur in America where these precautions are not taken, and the lecturer attributed a good deal of these accidents to colour-blindness, which appears to have attracted considerable attention in the United States. Surgeons, pilots, &c., are tested for colour, and in the army colour-blindness disqualifies the recruit for employment in the signal corps. Altogether the papers give an impression that in this new State there are diligent students of natural history and physics, and profound inquirers into all the phenomena of life. There was a reverse to the medal.
At a station where the train halted beyond Pueblo, a card was handed to me by one of the stewards. "The gentleman is, as he seemed very pressing, outside; but I told him you were engaged." I started as I read the name and address on the card, as well I might. They indicated that an old friend whom I had left in a condition of great bodily weakness and infirmity in London, was close at hand in this remote region—a wonderful if welcome fly in amber. I ran out of the drawing-room into the next car, and there saw a man, agitated and travel-worn, whom I had never, to the best of my belief, seen in my life before. His story was told, if not soon, at least in time to let me partly understand the situation ere the train moved off. The stranger had been in the service of the gentleman whose card he sent in to me, but had left it to better himself in America, and had gone out as valet to an American of good position at Colorado Springs. He found, however, according to his own account, that he was expected to do things not required of a valet in his own country, such as lumbering, wood-cutting, and the like, and so he had thrown up his situation and was going back to England. He had had quite enough of Colorado Springs. "I was not there above a month, and I was shot at twice," he said. "Once because I made some remark in a bar-room, where a chap was abusing Englishmen; and another time while I was speaking in the street to a man a fellow had a grudge against. He fired at him across the road, and the ball whistled within a hair's-breadth of my head." He had arrived at Pueblo some time before our special, and as the morning was warm, he walked into a bar near the platform, while the engine of his train was watering, to get a glass of lemonade. As he was drinking it, a man walked in and called for a glass of whisky, putting down, at the same time, what seemed to be a bank note, on the counter. The boniface said, "I haven't got change for this twenty-dollar bill—perhaps this gentleman can oblige you." The unsuspecting Briton, who had put the money for his passage to Liverpool in a purse, drew it out to change the note, and the strange customer at once seized it from his hand, and rushed off towards the street with his booty. The Britisher ran after him, but checked his wild career when he saw, within an inch of his head, the muzzle of a revolver which the robber had drawn, and the fellow vanished. "Won't you help me to stop the thief; you see what has happened?" exclaimed the victim turning to the barman. "I guess there was no money in that purse, sir. And if there was, perhaps you had no more right to it than he had." Then the Briton dashed off after Don Guzman, shouting "police," and was at once accosted by an officer of the Pueblo force. He hurriedly stated the facts. The policeman smiled. "I think you won't see that pile agin," he remarked; "and if you don't look sharp ye'll miss yer train, that's a fact!" The man had his railway ticket all right, a few dollars in his pocket, and I told him I would see him and get him a passage, if I found on inquiry his story was true. My companions thought the tale suspicious—but I believe it was true, and I subsequently franked the man to England.
Now here we had an exemplification of the manners and customs of the district. Such an act of violence and robbery might occur in London—anywhere. But what of the apathy, or perhaps complicity, of the bar man? And if it or they be considered not altogether abnormal, is the conduct of the policeman to be accepted as quite consistent with the discharge of a policeman's duty? Well, whilst I was pondering on these things, there came to me the best possible adviser—a judge in this Israel—our excellent Palinurus, Mr. White. He threw a new, if not a side light on the subject. "Depend on it he is a confidence man. The trains are full of them! Our conductors have express orders about the rascals." And he explained that a confidence man is a swindler—very often an Englishman, who makes it his business to look out for unwary strangers, on whom he imposes with some tale of distress, or some recital of imaginary misfortune and adventure. As the man I had seen was coming on in the train in our wake, Mr. White promised to talk with the conductor, and find out, if he could, the truth about the Pueblo robbery. Before dusk a telegram was forwarded by him to me from the station where he left us, to say that the conductor had no doubt the man was robbed, but that it was partly his own fault, and to warn me to be cautious in my dealings with him.
We have now been travelling straight on end for 1160 miles, with only two engineers and two firemen and one engine, a feat of endurance which has greatly exercised the Duke of Sutherland, who, as a practical director of the London and North-Western Railway, has knowledge of such matters, and who contrasts the performance with the experience he has on the home lines, where engines, engineers, and firemen would have been relieved or laid up over and over again. The head engineer of the line, who joined us, Mr. Hackney, formerly of Congleton, had become accustomed to these journeyings and endurances, which were brought to the front in our conversation by the engine-driver appearing at the door of the carriage to claim a dollar which he had won from the Duke in a bet that he could not do the distance without laying up the engine for repairs.
All the long Sabbath-day we travelled on through the prairie, catching glimpses now and then of wooden villages, around which trees were beginning to sprout up, and of the little churches with knots of carts, waggons, horses, and buggies outside, and people waiting for the end of the sermon. Now and then, perhaps at intervals of fifteen miles or so, are places of larger importance, such as Emporia, a rising city on the plains, where many steeples pointed aloft indicated considerable diversity of creed. An authority, not always to be relied upon, stated that there are fourteen churches belonging to the town.
There was a parting symposium in the second Pullman ere we reached Topeka. Mr. White, Major Anderson, General Brown, Mr. Jerome, and my much wandering compatriot, a veritable Irish Ulysses, raised the tuneful melodies of the "Golden Slipper," the "Little Brown Jug," and the other tender psalmodies which had whiled away so many hours, for the last time in our society, and the little gages which were but the outward and visible signs of the regard we felt for our friends were exchanged with honest effusion. There may be—nay, there are—many jealousies and causes of estrangement between the people of the Old Country and of the New, but between the individuals of both there is a camaraderie which cannot, I believe, be found between Englishmen and the natives of any country except America.
"Good bye! God bless you! Be sure if ever you come to England you shall have a hearty welcome from me." "And from me!" "And me!" "And me!" The engine bell tolled, and we moved slowly on.