oubt 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 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 ring, ma'am! I've just picked it up. Can't stop to find
the owner. Worth a dollar, ma'am; but if you'll give me fifty cents--"

"Boy!"

I rose fiercely, convulsively, in my seat, drew one long breath, but
whether he thought I was going to kill him,--I dare say I looked
it,--or whether he saw a sheriff behind, or a phantom gallows before, I
know not; but without waiting for the thunderbolt to strike, he rushed
from the car as precipitately as he had rushed in. I WAS angry,--not
because I was to have been cheated, for I been repeatedly and
atrociously cheated and only smiled, but because the rascal dared
attempt on me such a threadbare, ragged, shoddy trick as that. Do I
LOOK like a rough-hewn, unseasoned backwoodsman? Have I the air of
never having read a newspaper? Is there a patent innocence of
eye-teeth in my demeanor? O Jeru! Jeru! Somewhere in your virtuous
bosom you are nourishing a viper, for I have felt his fangs. Woe unto
you, if you do not strangle him before he develops into mature
anacondaism! In point of natural history I am not sure that vipers do
grow up anacondas, but for the purposes of moral philosophy the
development theory answers perfectly well.

In Boston we had three hours to spare; so we sent our luggage--that is,
my trunk--to the Worcester Depot, and walked leisurely ourselves. I
had a little