judge for itself whether the circumstances were such
as to warrant composure. To be sure, somebody said the car was to
be left at Jeru; but Jeru was eight miles away, and any quantity of
mischief might be done before we reached it,--if, indeed, we were
not prevented from reaching it altogether. It was a mere question of
dynamics. Would dry wood be able to hold its own against a raging fire
for half an hour? Of course the conductor thought it would; but even
conductors are not infallible; and you may imagine how comfortable it
was to sit and know that a fire was in full blast beneath you, and to
look down every few minutes expecting to see the flames forking up under
your feet. I confess I was not without something like a hope that one
tongue of the devouring element would flare up far enough to give
Halicarnassus a start; but it did not. No casualty occurred. We reached
Jeru in safety; but that does not prove that there was no danger, or
that indifference was anything but the most foolish hardihood. If our
burning car had been in mid-ocean, serenity would have been sublimity,
but to stay in the midst of peril when two steps would take one out of
it is idiocy. And that there was peril is conclusively shown by the fact
that the very next day the Eastern Railroad Depot took fire and was
burned to the ground. I have in my own mind no doubt that it was a
continuation of the same fire, and if we had stayed in the car much
longer, we should have shared the same fate.

We found Jeru to be a pleasant city, with only one fault: the
inhabitants will crowd into a car before passengers can get out;
consequently the heads of the two columns collide near the car-door, and
there is a general choke. Otherwise Jeru is a delightful city. It is
famous for its beautiful women. Its railroad-station is a magnificent
piece of architecture. Its men are retired East-India merchants.
Everybody in Jeru is rich and has real estate. The houses in Jeru
are three stories high and face on the Common. People in Jeru are
well-dressed and well-bred, and they all came over in the Mayflower.

We stopped in Jeru five minutes.

When we were ready to continue our travels Halicarnassus seceded into
the smoking-car, and while the engine was shrieking off its inertia, a
small boy, laboring under great agitation, hurried in, darted up to me,
and, thrusting a pinchbeck ring with a pink glass in it into my face,
exclaimed, in a hoarse whisper,--

"A beautiful r