depress, and our spirits remain
undaunted.

It was so stuffy in our compartment that I stood in the doorway for a
few moments near an open window. My companion was lying down in my
berth. We still had nineteen hours of travel before us with no
prospect of sleep, for sleep in those berths and over such a rough
road was absolutely out of the question.

Near me (and spitting in the saddest manner out of the open window)
stood the meek little American husband of the gray flannel and
curl-papers, whose fury at my companion for her quick work with the
customs officer knew no bounds.

The gray flannel had gone to bed again in the compartment next to
ours.

The precision of this gentleman's aim as he expectorated through the
open window, and the marvellous rapidity with which he managed his
diversion, led me to watch him. He looked tired and cold and ill. It
was still dark outside, and the jolting of the train was almost
unbearable. He had not once looked at me, but with his gaze still on
the darkness he said, slowly,

"They can have the whole blamed country for all of me! _I_ don't want
it."

It was so exactly the way I felt that even though he said something
worse than "blamed," I gave a shriek of delight, and my companion
pounded the pillow in her cooperation of the sentiment.

"You are an American and you are Southern," I said.

"Yes'm. How did you know?"

"By your accent."

"Yes'm, I was born in Virginia. I was in the Southern army four years,
and I love my country. I hate these blamed foreigners and their
blamed churches and their infernal foreign languages. I am over
here for my health, my wife says. But I have walked more miles in
picture-galleries than I ever marched in the army. I've seen more
pictures by Raphael than he could have painted if he'd 'a' had ten
arms and painted a thousand years without stopping to eat or sleep.
I've seen more 'old masters,' as they call 'em, but _I_ call 'em
_daubs_, all varnished till they are so slick that a fly would slip on
'em and break his neck. And the stone floors are so cold that I get
cold clean up to my knees, and I don't get warm for a week. Yet I am
over here for my health! Then the way they rob you--these blamed
French! Lord, if I ever get back to America, where one price includes
everything and your hotel bill isn't sent in on a ladder, and where I
can keep warm, won't I just be _too_ thankful."

Just then the gray-flannel door banged open and a hand reach