those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,' till, upon my word, she
made me quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the Company was run
for profit.

"'You forget, dear Charlie, that the laborer is worthy of his hire,' she
said, brightly. It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They
live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it,
and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to
set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded
fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of
creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.

"After this I got embraced, told to wear flannel, be sure to write
often, and so on--and I left. In the street--I don't know why--a queer
feeling came to me that I was an impostor. Odd thing that I, who used to
clear out for any part of the world at twenty-four hours' notice, with
less thought than most men give to the crossing of a street, had a
moment--I won't say of hesitation, but of startled pause, before this
commonplace affair. The best way I can explain it to you is by saying
that, for a second or two, I felt as though, instead of going to the
center of a continent, I were about to set off for the center of the
earth.

"I left in a French steamer, and she called in every blamed port they
have out there, for, as far as I could see, the sole purpose of landing
soldiers and custom-house officers. I watched the coast. Watching a
coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There
it is before you--smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or
savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, 'Come and find out.'
This one was almost featureless, as if still in the making, with