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Upon turning over again my diary of that excursion to the Pacific, I find that I set out from Atlantic waters on the 30th day of a backward and forlorn April, which had come and done nothing towards making its share of spring, but had gone, missing its chance, leaving the trees as bare as it had received them from the winds of March. It was not bleak weather alone, but care, that I sought to escape by a change of sky; and I hoped for some fellow-traveller who might begin to interest my thoughts at once. No such person met me in the several Pullmans which I inhabited from that afternoon until the forenoon of the following Friday. Through that long distance, though I had slanted southwestward across a multitude of States and vegetations, and the Mississippi lay eleven hundred miles to my rear, the single event is my purchasing some cat’s-eyes of the news-agent at Sierra Blanca. Save this, my diary contains only neat additions of daily expenses, and moral reflections of a delicate and restrained melancholy. They were Pecos cat’s-eyes, he told me, obtained in the rocky canyons of that stream, and destined to be worth little until fashion turned from foreign jewels to become aware of these fine native stones. And I, glad to possess the jewels of my country, chose two bracelets and a necklace of them, paying but twenty dollars for fifteen or sixteen cat’s-eyes, and resolved to give them a setting worthy of their beauty. The diary continues with moral reflections upon the servility of our taste before anything European, and the handwriting is clear and deliberate. It abruptly becomes hurried, and at length well- nigh illegible. It is best, I think, that you should have this portion as it comes, unpolished, unamended, unarranged–hot, so to speak, from my immediate pencil, instead of cold from my subsequent pen. I shall disguise certain names, but that is all.

Friday forenoon, May 5.–I don’t have to gaze at my cat’s-eyes to kill time any more. I’m not the only passenger any more. There’s a lady. She got in at El Paso. She has taken the drawing-room, but sits outside reading newspaper cuttings and writing letters. She is sixty, I should say, and has a cap and one gray curl. This comes down over her left ear as far as a purple ribbon which suspends a medallion at her throat. She came in wearing a sage-green duster of pongee silk, pretty nice, only the buttons are as big as those largest mint-drops. “You porter,” she said, “brush this.” He put down her many things and received it. Her dress was sage green, and pretty nice too. “You porter,” said she, “open every window. Why, they are, I declare! What’s the thermometer in this car?” “Ninety-five, ma’am. Folks mostly travelling–” “That will do, porter. Now you go make me a pitcher of lemonade right quick.” She went into the state-room and shut the door. When she came out she was dressed in what appeared to be chintz bedroom curtains. They hang and flow loosely about her, and are covered with a pattern of pink peonies. She has slippers–Turkish–that stare up in the air, pretty handsome and comfortable. But I never before saw any one travel with fly-paper. It must be hard to pack. But it’s quite an idea in this train. Fully a dozen flies have stuck to it already; and she reads her clippings, and writes away, and sips another glass of lemonade, all with the most extreme ap- pearance of leisure, not to say sloth. I can’t imagine how she manages to produce this atmosphere of indolence when in reality she is steadily occupied. Possibly the way she sits. But I think it’s partly the bedroom curtains.

These notes were interrupted by the entrance of the new conductor. “If you folks have chartered a private car, just say so,” he shouted instantly at the sight of us. He stood still at the extreme end and removed his hat, which was acknowledged by the lady. “Travel is surely very light, Gadsden,” she assented, and went on with her writing. But he remained standing still, and shouting like an orator: “Sprinkle the floor of this car, Julius, and let the pore passengers get a breath of cool. My lands!” He fanned himself sweepingly with his hat. He seemed but little larger than a red squirrel, and precisely that color. Sorrel hair, sorrel eyebrows, sorrel freckles, light sorrel mustache, thin aggressive nose, receding chin, and black, attentive, prominent eyes. He approached, and I gave him my ticket, which is as long as a neck-tie, and has my height, the color of my eyes and hair, and my general description, punched in the margin. “Why, you ain’t middle-aged!” he shouted, and a singular croak sounded behind me. But the lady was writing. “I have been growing younger since I bought that ticket,” I explained. “That’s it, that’s it,” he sang; a man’s always as old as he feels, and a woman–is ever young,” he finished. “I see you are true to the old teachings and the old-time chivalry, Gadsden,” said the lady, continuously busy. “Yes, ma’am. Jacob served seven years for Leah and seven more for Rachel.” “Such men are raised today in every worthy Louisiana home, Gadsden, be it ever so humble.” “Yes, ma’am. Give a fresh sprinkle to the floor, Julius, soon as it goes to get dry. Excuse me, but do you shave yourself, sir?” I told him that I did, but without excusing him. “You will see that I have a reason for asking,” he consequently pursued, and took out of his coat-tails a round tin box handsomely labelled “Nat. Fly Paper Co.,” so that I supposed it was thus, of course, that the lady came by her fly-paper. But this was pure coincidence, and the conductor explained: “That company’s me and a man at Shreveport, but he dissatisfies me right frequently. You know what heaven a good razor is for a man, and what you feel about a bad one. Vaseline and ground shells,” he said, opening the box, “and I’m not saying anything except it will last your lifetime and never hardens. Rub the size of a pea on the fine side of your strop, spread it to an inch with your thumb. May I beg a favor on so short a meeting? Join me in the gentlemen’s lavatory with your razorstrop in five minutes. I have to attend to a corpse in the baggage-car, and will return at once.” “Anybody’s corpse I know, Gadsden?” said the lady.” No, ma’am. Just a corpse.”