California, or "The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains"
in Tennessee, or "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" in Ohio, or "The
Grandissimes" near New Orleans, the nearest he could come to my modest
demand was "The Kreutzer Sonata" or the last effort of Miss Laura Jean
Libbey, a popular American novelist, who describes in glowing colours
how two aristocratic Englishmen, fighting a duel near London somewhere
in the seventies, were interrupted by the heroine, who drove between
them in a hansom _and pair_ and received the shots in its panels! Out
West, too, he could probably put more money in his pocket if he were
disposed to put his pride there too. One pert youth in Arizona
preferred to lose my order for cigars rather than bring the box to me
for selection; he said "he'd be darned if he'd sling boxes around for
me; I could come and choose for myself." However, when criticism has
been exhausted it is an undeniable fact that the American Pullman cars
are more comfortable and considerably cheaper than the so-called
_compartiments de luxe_ of European railways.

It is, perhaps, worth noting that the comfort of the engine-driver, or
engineer as he is called _lingua Americana_, is much better catered
for in the United States than in England. His cab is protected both
overhead and at the sides, while his bull's-eye window permits him to
look ahead without receiving the wind, dust, and snow in his eyes. The
curious English conservatism which, apparently, believes that a driver
will do his work better because exposed to almost the full violence of
the elements always excites a very natural surprise in the American
visitor to our shores.

The speed of American trains is as a rule slower than that of English
ones, though there are some brilliant exceptions to this rule. I never
remember dawdling along in so slow and apparently purposeless a manner
as in crossing the arid deserts of Arizona--unless, indeed, it was in
travelling by the Manchester and Milford line in Wales. The train on
the branch between Raymond (a starting-point for the Yosemite) and the
main line went so cannily that the engine-driver (an excellent
marksman) shot rabbits from the engine, while the fireman jumped down,
picked them up, and clambered on again at the end of the train. The
only time the train had to be stopped for him was when the engineer
had a successful right and left, the victims of which expired at some
distance from each other. It should be said that ther