stion, there it stood, nearly ready. Just behind
the great hissing locomotive, with its parabolic headlight and its
coal-laden tender, came the baggage, mail, and express cars; then the
passenger coaches, in which the social condition of the occupants
seemed to be in inverse ratio to their distance from the engine. First
came emigrants, "honest miners," "cowboys," and laborers; Irishmen,
Germans, Welshmen, Mennonites from Russia, quaint of garb and speech,
and Chinamen. Then came long cars full of people of better station, and
last the great Pullman "sleepers," in which the busy black porters were
making up the berths for well-to-do travelers of diverse nationalities
and occupations.

It was a curious study for a thoughtful observer, this motley crowd of
human beings sinking all differences of race, creed, and habits in the
common purpose to move westward--to the mountain fastnesses, the
sage-brush deserts and the Golden Gate.

The warning bell had sounded, and the fireman leaned far out for the
signal. The gong struck sharply the conductor shouted, "All aboard,"
and raised his hand; the tired ticket-seller shut his window, and the
train moved out of the station, gathered way as it cleared the
outskirts of the town, rounded a curve, entered on an absolutely
straight line, and, with one long whistle from the engine, settled down
to its work. Through the night hours it sped on, past lonely ranches
and infrequent stations, by and across shallow streams fringed with
cottonwood trees, over the greenish-yellow buffalo grass near the old
trail where many a poor emigrant, many a bold frontiersman, many a
brave soldier, had laid his bones but a short time before.

Familiar as they may be, there is something strangely impressive about
all-night journeys by rail, and those forming part of an American
transcontinental trip are almost weird. From the windows of a night
express in Europe or the older portions of the United States, one looks
on houses and lights, cultivated fields, fences, and hedges; and,
hurled as he may be through the darkness, he has a sense of
companionship and semi-security. Far different is it when the long
train is running over those two rails which, seen before night set in,
seem to meet on the horizon. Within all is as if between two great
seaboard cities; the neatly dressed people, the uniformed officials,
the handsome fittings, the various appliances for comfort. Without are
now long dreary levels, now