ers, occasional glimpses of
which were revealed from beneath the folds of a heavy ulster, which
swept the floor [I was sitting of course] and was trimmed with fur
collar and cuffs. And then that hat! On the table, carelessly thrown
amid a pile of correspondence, was his nondescript headgear. One of
those half-sombreros affected by the wild Western cowboy when on dress
parade, an impossible combination of dark-blue and bottle-green.

Fancy treating in this off-handed way a $7.50 soft black felt hat bought
of the best hatter in New York! No, nothing is sacred for those
interviewers. Dark-blue and bottle-green! Why, did that man imagine that
I wore my hat inside out so as to show the silk lining?

* * * * *

The air here is perfectly wonderful, dry and full of electricity. If
your fingers come into contact with anything metallic, like the
hot-water pipes, the chandeliers, the stopper of your washing basin,
they draw a spark, sharp and vivid. One of the reporters who called
here, and to whom I mentioned the fact, was able to light my gas with
his finger, by merely obtaining an electric spark on the top of the
burner. When he said he could thus light the gas, I thought he was
joking.

I had observed this phenomenon before. In Ottawa, for instance.

Whether this air makes you live too quickly, I do not know; but it is
most bracing and healthy. I have never felt so well and hearty in my
life as in these cold, dry climates.

* * * * *

I was all the more flattered to have such a large and fashionable
audience at the Grand Opera House to-night, that my _causerie_ was not
given under the auspices of any society, or as one of any course of
lectures.

I lecture in Detroit the day after to-morrow. I shall have to leave
Minneapolis to-morrow morning at six o'clock for Chicago, which I shall
reach at ten in the evening. Then I shall have to run to the Michigan
Central Station to catch the night train to Detroit at eleven.
Altogether, twenty-three hours of railway traveling--745 miles.

And still in "the neighborhood of Chicago!"

* * * * *

[Illustration: AN ADVERTISEMENT.]

_In the train to Chicago, February 21._

Have just passed a wonderful advertisement. Here, in the midst of a
forest, I have seen a huge wide board nailed on two trees, parallel to
the railway line. On it was written, round a daub supposed t