eveled, in their night-dresses, running
wild, and throwing themselves in the arms of men to seek protection, and
all shrieking and panic-stricken. Such a scene of confusion and terror
you can hardly imagine. Wonderful!

[Illustration: THE FIREMAN.]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXXIV.

A JOURNEY IF YOU LIKE--TERRIBLE ENCOUNTER WITH AN AMERICAN INTERVIEWER.

_In the train to Brushville, March 11._

Left Cincinnati this morning at ten o'clock and shall not arrive at
Brushville before seven o'clock to-night. I am beginning to learn how to
speak American. As I asked for my ticket this morning at the railroad
office, the clerk said to me:

"C. H. D. or C. C. C. St. L. and St. P.?"

"C. H. D.," I replied, with perfect assurance.

I happened to hit on the right line for Brushville.

By this time I know pretty well all those combinations of the alphabet
by which the different railroad lines of America are designated.

No hope of comfort or of a dinner to-day. I shall have to change trains
three times, but none of them, I am grieved to hear, have parlor cars or
dining cars. There is something democratic about uniform cars for all
alike. I am a democrat myself, yet I have a weakness for the parlor
cars--and the dining cars.

At noon we stopped five minutes at a place which, two years ago, counted
six wooden huts. To-day it has more than 5000 inhabitants, the electric
light in the streets, a public library, two hotels, four churches, two
banks, a public school, a high school, cuspidores, toothpicks, and all
the signs of American civilization.

I changed trains at one o'clock at Castle Green Junction. No hotel in
the place. I inquired where food could be obtained. A little wooden hut,
on the other side of the depot, bearing the inscription "Lunch Room,"
was pointed out to me. _Lunch_ in America has not the meaning that it
has in England, as I often experienced to my despair. The English are
solid people. In England _lunch_ means something. In America, it does
not. However, as there was no _Beware_ written outside, I entered the
place. Several people were eating pies, fruit pies, pies with crust
under, and crust over: sealed mysteries.

[Illustration: "PEACH POY AND APPLE POY."]

"I want something to eat," I said to a man behind the counter, who was
in possession of only one eye, and hailed from Old Oireland.

"What 'd ye loike?" replied he, winking with the eye that was not there.

"Well, what have you