Across The Plains | Page 9

packages into safe keeping; but I did not wish
to go to bed. And this, it appeared, was impossible in an American
hotel.
It was, of course, some inane misunderstanding, and sprang from my
unfamiliarity with the language. For although two nations use the same
words and read the same books, intercourse is not conducted by the
dictionary. The business of life is not carried on by words, but in set
phrases, each with a special and almost a slang signification. Some
international obscurity prevailed between me and the coloured
gentleman at Council Bluffs; so that what I was asking, which seemed
very natural to me, appeared to him a monstrous exigency. He refused,
and that with the plainness of the West. This American manner of
conducting matters of business is, at first, highly unpalatable to the
European. When we approach a man in the way of his calling, and for
those services by which he earns his bread, we consider him for the
time being our hired servant. But in the American opinion, two
gentlemen meet and have a friendly talk with a view to exchanging
favours if they shall agree to please. I know not which is the more
convenient, nor even which is the more truly courteous. The English
stiffness unfortunately tends to be continued after the particular
transaction is at an end, and thus favours class separations. But on the

other hand, these equalitarian plainnesses leave an open field for the
insolence of Jack-in-office.
I was nettled by the coloured gentleman's refusal, and unbuttoned my
wrath under the similitude of ironical submission. I knew nothing, I
said, of the ways of American hotels; but I had no desire to give trouble.
If there was nothing for it but to get to bed immediately, let him say the
word, and though it was not my habit, I should cheerfully obey.
He burst into a shout of laughter. "Ah!" said he, "you do not know
about America. They are fine people in America. Oh! you will like
them very well. But you mustn't get mad. I know what you want. You
come along with me."
And issuing from behind the counter, and taking me by the arm like an
old acquaintance, he led me to the bar of the hotel.
"There," said he, pushing me from him by the shoulder, "go and have a
drink!"
THE EMIGRANT TRAIN
All this while I had been travelling by mixed trains, where I might meet
with Dutch widows and little German gentry fresh from table. I had
been but a latent emigrant; now I was to be branded once more, and put
apart with my fellows. It was about two in the afternoon of Friday that I
found myself in front of the Emigrant House, with more than a hundred
others, to be sorted and boxed for the journey. A white-haired official,
with a stick under one arm, and a list in the other hand, stood apart in
front of us, and called name after name in the tone of a command. At
each name you would see a family gather up its brats and bundles and
run for the hindmost of the three cars that stood awaiting us, and I soon
concluded that this was to be set apart for the women and children. The
second or central car, it turned out, was devoted to men travelling alone,
and the third to the Chinese. The official was easily moved to anger at
the least delay; but the emigrants were both quick at answering their
names, and speedy in getting themselves and their effects on board.

The families once housed, we men carried the second car without
ceremony by simultaneous assault. I suppose the reader has some
notion of an American railroad-car, that long, narrow wooden box, like
a flat-roofed Noah's ark, with a stove and a convenience, one at either
end, a passage down the middle, and transverse benches upon either
hand. Those destined for emigrants on the Union Pacific are only
remarkable for their extreme plainness, nothing but wood entering in
any part into their constitution, and for the usual inefficacy of the lamps,
which often went out and shed but a dying glimmer even while they
burned. The benches are too short for anything but a young child.
Where there is scarce elbow-room for two to sit, there will not be space
enough for one to lie. Hence the company, or rather, as it appears from
certain bills about the Transfer Station, the company's servants, have
conceived a plan for the better accommodation of travellers. They
prevail on every two to chum together. To each of the chums they sell a
board and three square cushions stuffed with straw, and covered with
thin cotton. The benches can be made to