Gala-Days | Page 9

wood be able to hold its own against a raging fire for half an hour?
Of course the conductor thought it would; but even conductors are not

infallible; and you may imagine how comfortable it was to sit and
know that a fire was in full blast beneath you, and to look down every
few minutes expecting to see the flames forking up under your feet. I
confess I was not without something like a hope that one tongue of the
devouring element would flare up far enough to give Halicarnassus a
start; but it did not. No casualty occurred. We reached Jeru in safety;
but that does not prove that there was no danger, or that indifference
was anything but the most foolish hardihood. If our burning car had
been in mid-ocean, serenity would have been sublimity, but to stay in
the midst of peril when two steps would take one out of it is idiocy.
And that there was peril is conclusively shown by the fact that the very
next day the Eastern Railroad Depot took fire and was burned to the
ground. I have in my own mind no doubt that it was a continuation of
the same fire, and if we had stayed in the car much longer, we should
have shared the same fate.
We found Jeru to be a pleasant city, with only one fault: the inhabitants
will crowd into a car before passengers can get out; consequently the
heads of the two columns collide near the car-door, and there is a
general choke. Otherwise Jeru is a delightful city. It is famous for its
beautiful women. Its railroad-station is a magnificent piece of
architecture. Its men are retired East-India merchants. Everybody in
Jeru is rich and has real estate. The houses in Jeru are three stories high
and face on the Common. People in Jeru are well-dressed and well-bred,
and they all came over in the Mayflower.
We stopped in Jeru five minutes.
When we were ready to continue our travels, Halicarnassus seceded
into the smoking-car, and the engine was shrieking off its inertia, a
small boy, laboring under great agitation, hurried in, darted up to me,
and, thrusting a pinchbeck ring with a pink glass in it into my face,
exclaimed, in a hoarse whisper,--
"A beautiful ring, ma'am! I've just picked it up. Can't stop to find the
owner. Worth a dollar, ma'am; but if you'll give me fifty cents--"
"Boy!"

I rose fiercely, convulsively, in my seat, drew one long breath, but
whether he thought I was going to kill him,--I dare say I looked it,--or
whether he saw a sheriff behind, or a phantom gallows before, I know
not; but without waiting for the thunderbolt to strike, he rushed from
the car as precipitately as he had rushed in. I WAS angry,--not because
I was to have been cheated, for I been repeatedly and atrociously
cheated and only smiled, but because the rascal dared attempt on me
such a threadbare, ragged, shoddy trick as that. Do I LOOK like a
rough-hewn, unseasoned backwoodsman? Have I the air of never
having read a newspaper? Is there a patent innocence of eye-teeth in
my demeanor? O Jeru! Jeru! Somewhere in your virtuous bosom you
are nourishing a viper, for I have felt his fangs. Woe unto you, if you
do not strangle him before he develops into mature anacondaism! In
point of natural history I am not sure that vipers do grow up anacondas,
but for the purposes of moral philosophy the development theory
answers perfectly well.
In Boston we had three hours to spare; so we sent our luggage--that is,
my trunk--to the Worcester Depot, and walked leisurely ourselves. I
had a little shopping to do, to complete my outfit for the journey,--a
very little shopping,--only a nightcap or two. Ordinarily such a thing is
a matter of small moment, but in my case the subject bad swollen into
unnatural dimensions. Nightcaps are not generally considered
healthy,--at least not by physicians. Nature has given to the head its
sufficient and appropriate covering, the hair. Anything more than this
injures the head, by confining the heat, preventing the soothing, cooling
contact of air, and so deranging the circulation of the blood. Therefore I
have always heeded the dictates of Nature, which I have supposed to be
to brush out the hair thoroughly at night and let it fly. But there are
serious disadvantages connected with this course. For Nature will be
sure to whisk the hair away from your ears where you want it, and into
your eyes where you don't want it, besides crowning you with
magnificent disorder in the morning. But as I have always believed that
no evil exists without its remedy, I had long been exercising my
inventive genius