s'pose there's a good deal less
traffic over the road."

He then went down Wall street to the Hanover Square station and I saw
him no more.

MY TRIP TO DIXIE

XXIV

I once took quite a long railway trip into the South in search of my
health. I called my physicians together, and they decided by a rising
vote that I ought to go to a warmer clime, or I should enjoy very poor
health all winter. So I decided to go in search of my health, if I died
on the trail.

I bought tickets at Cincinnati of a pale, sallow liar, who is just
beginning to work his way up to the forty-ninth degree in the Order of
Ananias. He will surely be heard from again some day, as he has the
elements that go to make up a successful prevaricator.

He said that I could go through from Cincinnati to Asheville, North
Carolina, with only one easy change of cars, and in about twenty-three
hours. It took me twice that time, and I had to change cars three times
in the dead of night.

The southern railroad is not in a flourishing condition. It ought to go
somewhere for its health. Anyway, it ought to go somewhere, which at
present it does not. According to the old Latin proverb, I presume we
should say nothing but good of the dead, but I am here to say that the
railroad that knocked my spine loose last week, and compelled me to
carry lunch baskets and large Norman two-year-old gripsacks through the
gloaming, till my arms hung down to the ground, does not deserve to be
treated well, even after death.

I do not feel any antipathy toward the South, for I did not take any
part in the war, remaining in Canada during the whole time, and so I can
not now be accused of offensive partisanship. I have always avoided
anything that would look like a settled conviction in any of these
matters, retaining always a fair, unpartisan and neutral idiocy in
relation to all national affairs, so that I might be regarded as a good
civil service reformer, and perhaps at some time hold an office.

To further illustrate how fair-minded I am in these matters, I may say I
have patiently read all the war articles written by both sides, and I
have not tried to dodge the foot-notes or the marginal references, or
the war maps or the memoranda. I have read all these things until I
can't tell who was victorious, and if that is not a fair and impartial
way to look at the war, I don't know how to proceed in order to
eradicate my prejudices.

But a railroad is not a politica