near me Broadway actually ends." Then, while dark men under the ray of a
lantern fumbled with the gigantic couplings, I said to myself that if I
did not get back to my car I should probably be left behind. I regained
my state-room and waited, watch in hand, for the jerk of restarting. I
waited half an hour. Some mishap with the couplings! We left Albany
thirty-three minutes late. Habitués of the train affected nonchalance.
One of them offered to bet me that "she would make it up." The admirals
and captains avoided our gaze.

We dined, _à la carte_; the first time I had ever dined _à la carte_ on
any train. An excellent dinner, well and sympathetically served. The
mutton was impeccable. And in another instant, as it seemed, we were
running, with no visible flags, through an important and showy street of
a large town, and surface-cars were crossing one another behind us. I
had never before seen an express train let loose in the middle of an
unprotected town, and I was _naïf_ enough to be startled. But a huge
electric sign--"Syracuse bids you welcome"--tranquilized me. We briefly
halted, and drew away from the allurement of those bright streets into
the deep, perilous shade of the open country.

I went to bed. The night differed little from other nights spent in
American sleeping-cars, and I therefore will not describe it in detail.
To do so might amount to a solecism. Enough to say that the jerkings
were possibly less violent and certainly less frequent than usual,
while, on the other hand, the halts were strangely long; one, indeed,
seemed to last for hours; I had to admit to myself that I had been to
sleep and dreamed this stoppage.

From a final cat-nap I at last drew up my blind to greet the oncoming
day, and was rewarded by one of the finest and most poetical views I