American Adventures | Page 5

various pockets.
"She says," continued Gray-eyes, "that she never met more charming people or had better things to eat. She loves the southern accent too."
I don't know how the tickets got into my upper right vest pocket; I never carry tickets there; but that is where I found them.
"Do you like it?" asked the other girl of me.
"Like what?"
"Why, the southern accent."
"Any valuation?" the baggageman demanded.
"Yes," I answered them both at once.
"Oh, you do?" cried Violet-eyes, incredulously.
"Why, yes; I think--"
"Put down the amount and sign here," the baggageman directed, pushing a slip toward me and placing a pencil in my hand.
I obeyed. The baggageman took the slip and went off to a little desk. I judged that he had finished with me for the moment.
"But don't you think," my fair inquisitor continued, "that the southern girls pile on the accent awfully, because they know it pleases men?"
"Perhaps," I said. "But then, what better reason could they have for doing so?"
"Listen to that!" she cried to her companion. "Did you ever hear such egotism?"
"He's nothing but a man," said Gray-eyes scornfully. "I wouldn't be a man for--"
"A dollar and eighty-five cents," declared the baggageman.
I paid him.
"I wouldn't be a man for anything!" my fair friend finished as we started to move off.
"I wouldn't have you one," I told her, opening the concourse door.
"Hay!" shouted the baggageman. "Here's your ticket and your checks!"
I returned, took them, and put them in my pocket. Again we proceeded upon our way. I was glad to leave the baggageman.
This time the porter meant to take no chances.
"What train, boss?" he asked.
"The Congressional Limited."
"You got jus' four minutes."
"Goodness!" cried Gray-eyes.
"I thought," said Violet-eyes as we accelerated our pace, "that you prided yourself on always having time to spare?"
"Usually I do," I answered, "but in this case--"
"What car?" the porter interrupted tactfully.
Again I felt for my tickets. This time they were in my change pocket. I can't imagine how I came to put them there.
"But in this case--what?" The violet eyes looked threatening as their owner put the question.
"Seat seven, car three," I told the porter firmly as we approached the gate. Then, turning to my dangerous and lovely cross-examiner: "In this case I am unfortunate, for there is barely time to say good-by."
There are several reasons why I don't believe in railway station kisses. Kisses given in public are at best but skimpy little things, suggesting the swift peck of a robin at a peach, whereas it is truer of kissing than of many other forms of industry that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well. Yet I knew that one of these enchantresses expected to be kissed, and that the other very definitely didn't. Therefore I kissed them both.
Then I bolted toward the gate.
"Tickets!" demanded the gateman, stopping me.
At last I found them in the inside pocket of my overcoat. I don't know how they got there. I never carry tickets in that pocket.
As the train began to move I looked at my watch and, discovering it to be three minutes fast, set it right. That is the sort of train the Congressional Limited is. A moment later we were roaring through the blackness of the Hudson River tunnel.
There is something fine in the abruptness of the escape from New York City by the Pennsylvania Railroad. From the time you enter the station you are as good as gone. There is no progress between the city's tenements, with untidy bedding airing in some windows and fat old slatterns leaning out from others to survey the sordidness and squalor of the streets below. A swift plunge into darkness, some thundering moments, and your train glides out upon the wide wastes of the New Jersey meadows. The city is gone. You are even in another State. Far, far behind, bathed in glimmering haze which gives them the appearance of palaces in a mirage, you may see the tops of New York's towering sky-scrapers, dwarfed yet beautified by distance. Outside the wide car window the advertising sign-boards pass to the rear in steady parade, shrieking in strong color of whiskies, tobaccos, pills, chewing gums, cough drops, flours, hams, hotels, soaps, socks, and shows.
CHAPTER II
A BALTIMORE EVENING
I felt her presence by its spell of might, Stoop o'er me from above; The calm, majestic presence of the night, As of the one I love.
--LONGFELLOW.
Before I went to Baltimore I had but two definite impressions connected with the place: the first was of a tunnel, filled with coal gas, through which trains pass beneath the city; the second was that when a southbound train left Baltimore the time had come to think of cleaning up, preparatory to reaching Washington.
Arriving at Baltimore after dark, one gathers an impression of an adequate though not impressive Union Station from which one emerges to