gone out. For his sake, indeed, I was made
welcome; and for mine the conversation rolled awhile with laborious
effort on the virtues of the deceased. His former comrades dwelt, in
my company, upon his business talents or his generosity for public
purposes; when my back was turned, they remembered him no more. My
father had loved me; I had left him alone to live and die among the
indifferent; now I returned to find him dead and buried and forgotten.
Unavailing penitence translated itself in my thoughts to fresh resolve.
There was another poor soul who loved me: Pinkerton. I must not be
guilty twice of the same error.

A week perhaps had been thus wasted, nor had I prepared my friend for
the delay. Accordingly, when I had changed trains at Council Bluffs, I
was aware of a man appearing at the end of the car with a telegram in
his hand and inquiring whether there were any one aboard "of the name of
LONDON Dodd?" I thought the name near enough, claimed the despatch,
and found it was from Pinkerton: "What day do you arrive? Awfully
important." I sent him an answer giving day and hour, and at Ogden found
a fresh despatch awaiting me: "That will do. Unspeakable relief. Meet
you at Sacramento." In Paris days I had a private name for Pinkerton:
"The Irrepressible" was what I had called him in hours of bitterness,
and the name rose once more on my lips. What mischief was he up to now?
What new bowl was my benignant monster brewing for his Frankenstein? In
what new imbroglio should I alight on the Pacific coast? My trust in
the man was entire, and my distrust perfect. I knew he would never
mean amiss; but I was convinced he would almost never (in my sense) do
aright.

I suppose these vague anticipations added a shade of gloom to that
already gloomy place of travel: Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, scowled
in my face at least, and seemed to point me back again to that other
native land of mine, the Latin Quarter. But when the Sierras had been
climbed, and the train, after so long beating and panting, stretched
itself upon the downward track--when I beheld that vast extent
of prosperous country rolling seaward from the woods and the blue
mountains, that illimitable spread of rippling corn, the trees growing
and blowing in the merry weather, the country boys thronging aboard
the train with figs and peaches, and the conductors, and the very
darky stewards, visibly exulting in the change--up went my soul like a
balloon; Care fell fr