the offer. As for him and me, we had enjoyed a very pleasant
conversation; he, in particular, had found much pleasure in my
society; I was a stranger; this was exactly one of those rare
conjunctures.... Without being very clear seeing, I can still
perceive the sun at noonday; and the coloured gentleman deftly
pocketed a quarter.

WEDNESDAY. - A little after midnight I convoyed my widow and
orphans on board the train; and morning found us far into Ohio.
This had early been a favourite home of my imagination; I have
played at being in Ohio by the week, and enjoyed some capital sport
there with a dummy gun, my person being still unbreeched. My
preference was founded on a work which appeared in CASSELL'S FAMILY
PAPER, and was read aloud to me by my nurse. It narrated the
doings of one Custaloga, an Indian brave, who, in the last chapter,
very obligingly washed the paint off his face and became Sir
Reginald Somebody-or-other; a trick I never forgave him. The idea
of a man being an Indian brave, and then giving that up to be a
baronet, was one which my mind rejected. It offended
verisimilitude, like the pretended anxiety of Robinson Crusoe and
others to escape from uninhabited islands.

But Ohio was not at all as I had pictured it. We were now on those
great plains which stretch unbroken to the Rocky Mountains. The
country was flat like Holland, but far from being dull. All
through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, or for as much as I saw
of them from the train and in my waking moments, it was rich and
various, and breathed an elegance peculiar to itself. The tall
corn pleased the eye; the trees were graceful in themselves, and
framed the plain into long, aerial vistas; and the clean, bright,