would be hard for that distinguished chef to match our menu; for, in
addition to all that ordinarily makes up a first-chop dinner, had we
not our antelope steak (the gormand who has not experienced this
--bah! what does he know of the feast of fat things?) our delicious
mountain-brook trout, and choice fruits and berries, and (sauce
piquant and unpurchasable!) our sweet-scented, appetite-compelling
air of the prairies?

"You may depend upon it, we all did justice to the good things, and
as we washed them down with bumpers of sparkling Krug, whilst we
sped along at the rate of thirty miles an hour, agreed it was the
fastest living we had ever experienced. (We beat that, however, two
days afterward when we made twenty-seven miles in twenty-seven
minutes, while our Champagne glasses filled to the brim spilled not
a drop!) After dinner we repaired to our drawing-room car, and, as
it was Sabbath eve, intoned some of the grand old hymns--"Praise God
from whom," etc.; "Shining Shore," "Coronation," etc.--the voices of
the men singers and of the women singers blending sweetly in the
evening air, while our train, with its great, glaring Polyphemus
eye, lighting up long vistas of prairie, rushed into the night and
the Wild. Then to bed in luxurious couches, where we slept the
sleep of the just and only awoke the next morning (Monday) at eight
o'clock, to find ourselves at the crossing of the North Platte,
three hundred miles from Omaha--fifteen hours and forty minutes
out."




CHAPTER V.