tes at the rate of two hundred and fifty miles an
hour to verify it.

You sit down to the principal meal of the day in the dining car at say
six o'clock. Not happening to be an American, you intend to eat your
meal in a reasonable time, say an hour, instead of five minutes. Why
hurry? What is there to do before retiring to the sleeping car to be
jolted sleeplessly about for seven or eight hours? Nothing; so take as
long as possible over your meal. You leisurely order a wine from the
list, and it is brought, uncorked and placed by your side. After the
soup and fish you think you will take glass No. 1, but no, not a bit of
it! You are now rushing through a proclaimed State, and your glass and
bottle are promptly removed. Sancho Panza never looked so surprised as
you do. To add insult to injury, or rather injury to insult, you are
brought that frightful cause of indigestion, "iced water." I have been
told "by one who knows" never to touch the ice on these railway cars; it
is not safe, though for what reason I cannot at the moment recollect. It
comes from some wayside cesspool or out of a rusty copper boiler, or is
the refrigerated perspiration off the railway carriage windows, or
something dreadful; anyway, it is unsafe. So you look at it and toy with
the next course on the chance of flying quickly through this detestable
state of narrow-mindedness and broad absurdity. Your patience is
rewarded. You fly past some wooden houses and blazing factories and
vulgar advertisements of quack medicines, the vendors of which forsooth
are those who prohibit a weary traveller from aiding digestion by
drinking an innocent and harmless beverage. The "coloured gentleman"
returns smiling with the bottle and glass.

"Guess we've cut through that State; this isn't proclaimed."

You drink confusion to the priggish provincial faddist whose State we
have just passed, and continue your dinner.

I am a slow drinker. During my late illness, the illness that caused my
trip to America, I had to take all my meals dry--allowed to drink
nothing whatever, not even a drop of water; so perhaps it is not
unnatural that after months of this treatment I should find a difficulty
in drinking before my meal is over. So when the above-mentioned incident
occurred to me, it so happened that I was in no hurry to raise my glass
to my lips. At last I took it up, but before I could transfer any of its
contents to the interior of my throat a dusky hand was placed on