The other glanced at the field rather dubiously, I thought; but answered promptly:

'That's wheat, sir.'

It was rye, nevertheless.

I observed that the tourist had, by affability, completely won the heart of the conductor. Whenever that official was at liberty—which, by the way, was only for a few minutes at a time, in of the numerous stopping places—he would sit down until the scream of the whistle summoned him again to his duty, when he would hurry through his task, again to his favorite seat.

The gentleman was much struck with the large quantities of wild raspberries, that clothed the fences on either side of the track. 'There were no raspberries,' he said, 'where he came from. At the very next station I saw the conductor go out (although it was now raining), break off a branch, loaded with ripe fruit, from a raspberry bush, and returning to the car, smilingly present it to his friend. The gentleman thanked him warmly; but instead of selfishly devouring the fruit himself, generously shared it with all within reach of his arm, with a diffusive benevolence that put me in mind of the free-hearted Irishman, who, as he gave his friend the half of his potato, said: 'You're welcome to it, if 'twere twice as little.'

At another place the tourist himself got out, and returned with a handful of wayside flowers. Selecting from them a fine, blooming clover head, and a little weed of the bulrush family, he placed them between the leaves of his guide book, saying to his neighbor, as he did so:

'I like to preserve such little mementoes of the places I visit. Once, when travelling at the South, I gathered a cotton bud; and would you believe it, in the course of three months it expanded to a perfect flower, and actually ripened its seeds?'

'Why, then,' said the other, laughingly, 'we need be at no loss for cotton, if it can be cultivated as easily as that.'

In striking contrast to this passenger, was another, who sat a few seats in front of him. His appearance was not prepossessing, on the contrary, 'quite the reverse.' He was a coarse, heavy-looking, thick-set, dirty, Irish soldier, redolent of whiskey and tobacco. His looks inspired me with profound disgust and dislike, which were not at all lessened when I saw him take from the hands of a comrade a black bottle, and applying it to his lips, solace himself with a 'dhrop of the cratur.'

But I found, ere long, that there was a heart beneath that dirty uniform, a soft kernel inside of the rude, unpromising husk. His family were on the car; and as he sat in a lounging attitude, conversing with his comrade (they had both been discharged, I heard them say, from the '6th New York'), a little girl came staggering along the passage way, holding herself up by the seats on either side. As she neared him, she sprang to him, and placed herself between his knees; and the coarse, weather-beaten face beamed down upon her with such a smile—so full of warm, tender, earnest affection, that I felt rebuked for my previous poor opinion of that man.