er (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 from his perch upon my shoulders; and when I spied my
Pinkerton among the crowd at Sacramento, I thought of nothing but to
shout and wave for him, and grasp him by the hand, like what he was--my
dearest friend.

"O, Loudon!" he cried; "man, how I've pined for you! And you haven't
come an hour too soon. You're known here and waited for; I've been
booming you already: you're billed for a lecture to-morrow night:
'Student Life in Paris, Grave and Gay': twelve hundred places booked at
the last stock! Tut, man, you're looking thin! Here, try a drop of
this." And he produced a case bottle, staringly labelled PINKERTON'S
THIRTEEN STAR GOLDEN STATE BRANDY, WARRANTED ENTIRE.

"God bless me!" said I, gasping and winking after my first plunge into
this fiery fluid; "and what does 'Warranted Entire' mean?"

"Why, Loudon, you ought to know that!" cried Pinkerton. "It's real,
copper-bottomed English; you see it on all the old-time wayside
hostelries over there."

"But if I'm not mistaken, it means something Warranted Entirely
different," said I, "and applies to the public-house, and not the
beverages sold."

"It's very possible," said Jim, quite unabashed. "It's effective,
anyway; and I can tell you, sir, it has boomed that spirit: it goes now
by the gross of cases. By the way, I hope you won't mind; I've got your
portrait all over San Francisco for the lecture, enlarged from that
carte de visite: 'H. Loudon Dodd, the Americo-Parisienne Sculptor.'
Here's a proof of the small handbills; the posters are the same, only in
red and blue, and the letters fourteen by one."

I looked at the handbill, and my head turned. What was the use of words?