y of us, perhaps fifteen in all, had travelled a distance of some
two thousand miles to assist at the opening of a new line of railway in
the remote Northwest. We duly arrived at the little mountain town at
which the junction was to be made between the line running up from the
south and that running down from the north, over which we had come. The
ceremony of driving the last spike was conducted with due solemnity,
after which a "banquet" was given to us by the Mayor and citizens of the
small community. After the banquet--which was really a luncheon--we
again boarded our train to complete the run to the southern end of the
line, a number of the citizens of the town with their wives accompanying
us on the jaunt. It chanced to be my privilege to escort to the car,
and for the remainder of the journey to sit beside, the wife of the
editor of the local paper. She was pretty, charming, and admirably
dressed. We talked of many things,--of America and England, of the red
Indians, and of books,--when in a pause in the conversation she
remarked:

"I think this is such a nice way of travelling, don't you?"

It puzzled me. What did she mean? Was she referring to the fact that we
were on a special train composed of private cars, or what? The truth did
not at first occur to me--that she was referring to railway travelling
as a whole, it being the first time that she had ever been on or seen a
train. Explanations followed. She had been brought by her parents, soon
after the close of the Civil War, when two or three years old, across
the plains in a prairie schooner (the high-topped waggon in which the
pioneers used to make their westward pilgrimage), taking some four
months for the trip from the old home in, I think, Kentucky. At all
events she was a Southerner. Since then during her whole life she had
known no surroundings but those of the little mining settlement huddled
in among the mountains, her longest trips from home having been for a
distance of thirty or forty miles on horseback or on a buckboard. She
had lived all her life in log cabins and never known what it meant to
have a servant. She read French and Italian, but could not take any
interest in German. She sketched and painted, and was incomparably
better informed on matters of art than I, though she knew the Masters
only, of course, through the medium of prints and engravings. What she
most dearly longed to do in all the world was to see a theatre--Irving
for choice--a