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Chapter XII · G.T.T., or The Wonderful Adventures of a Pullman

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  Chapter twelve of Gone to Texas or The Wonderful Adventures of a Pullman by Edward
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  Hale, Chapter twelve. Our party was in no hurry, so Effie and
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  Hester slept till morning, though the boat was at the landing long before missus
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  Ridgshey had gone, and the Harnets had come, met Miss Harnett and taken
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  her away, And only the Norwegian girl and the two friends were left of
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  all last night's party. There was no mister haydock alas and no mister brinkerhoff
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  as at Friendly Louisville, but they were treated with all the honors. The
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  luggage was all ticketed, and they evaded all coachmen and walked with Eliza to
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  the hotel, where she must wait till the hour for her train. Then
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  the girls themselves had some hours, and these they lounged away as best they
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  might, a chance to buy India rubber and gamboge and court plaster and notepaper,
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  and French chalk and hairpins and everything else to make one comfortable. Walking
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  out of town for purposes of sketching proved not so easy. It had rained
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  heavily in the night, and the red mud of Shreeport was as tenacious Potter's
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  clay mixed in with Upton's glue when the same has been well made by King.
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  When they first crossed a street, Effie's overshoe was drawn off as if
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  some underground bulldog had bitten it. It was only recovered by a resolute double
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  handed pull by Hester, and that day they crossed no more streets. They
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  retired to the station house, made their sketches there, and with a paint
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  knife, cut off the mud which still clung to the overshoe. And then
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  early in the afternoon the train, not yet the pullman eager reader. At
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  first only a comfortable airy car. But oh the luxury of seeing rolling hills
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  and valleys again hardly hills, no, not high hills, but woods and
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  slopes, a little like home, and something not quite flat. So they
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  came to Marshall, and here, after dinner, swept along the Imperial through
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  train, ready to pick up such insignificant loiterers on branches. How ashamed the
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  people who had not been running on express time were expected to feel, but
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  they were not ashamed. Effie gathered up the Gray's botany, the official guide,
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  and the racene her shawl strap, her umbrella, her waterproof and her
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  hand bag, and with two hands carried them and at the same moment held
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  up her skirts. Hester picked up her Black's Phaeton, Effie's sketch book,
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  her own portfolio, in which, when the train came she was writing just
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  a line to mister Haydock. She took also her cloak, her India rubbers,
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  which she had not time to put on, and her carpet bag in
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  her two hands. A cheerful black boy followed with their other traps, and
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  so they crossed to the platform of the Imperial through train. Here stood a
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  person who seemed not quite a stranger. Here's your drawing room car, drawing
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  room car, madam, And then he smiled a broader grin than before.
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  Effie gave him her traps and mounted the steps of the palace, not recognizing
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  Hester had a moment more to look on him. It was Aurelius, their
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  own porter, who had left Jersey City with them, how long ago it
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  seemed, And the palace it was their own dear Golgonda, home again,
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  home again from a foreign shore. And they passed directly to six and seven
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  and bad Aurelius put their things there and sank in their old seats after all
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  their strange and eventful wanderings, with a delight which none can know. But
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  monarchs who have returned to the serene splendors of their own homes do not ask
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  me how the Golgonda came there? I do not know, nor did Aurelius
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  know. Some hot box on the Iron Mountain road above had disabled the Siberia,
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  and the Golgonda had been substituted. And Aurelius, like the faithful lackeys
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  of all palaces, had gone where his dynasty had gone, and was a
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  Tuxan to day as he had been a Jerseyman four days before, and in
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  more senses than one, Hester and Effie felt at home. The country of
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  eastern Texas, where they now were, is not the rich and fertile region
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  of which Texas boasts most. But these ladies had seen their fill for the
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  moment of fertile lands. And what pleased them here was that, as one
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  road, this looked like the woodlands of eastern Massachusetts, or of unmountainous Rhode
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  Island. Of course, the flora differs, but a pine is a pine.
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  And though the skillful Hester knew and the keen sighted Effie perceived that these
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  pines were not their pines. Still they were glad that they were pines at
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  all. There were rolling hills and railroad cuts enough to keep up the general
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  resemblance. It was not such country that the torrent of emigrants had come to
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  see, and they were sweeping on. Further, the existence of the palace
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  car in such regions makes all other cars second class, and a wild enough
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  look unkempt and untidy. Have the body of passengers in them. They have
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  slept in these seats, perhaps they have eaten in them, and have drank
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  in them, and have made in them such toilets as they make. And
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  they are of every country that are urge from babel Chinamen, black Men,
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  red Men, Hungarian, Austrian, Prussian, Frenchmen, Spaniard, Englishmen,
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  Scotchmen, Welshmen and Irishmen, Jews and Proselites, Cretes and Arabians might all
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  meet in one of these emigrant trains. The ladies would visit them sometimes to
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  carry an orange or a banana to some of the tired children, And they
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  were learning all the time how true it is that their own country is one
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  out of many. It will never do to try to follow along their diaries
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  with their vain and vague attempts to sleep off wheels at night, that as
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  they rode they might see springtime, the first real springtime they had ever seen,
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  in beautiful Texas, where, if anywhere, spring is spring. The
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  trouble of all such steps in the Western system of travel is this, there
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  is but one fast train a day. That is, there is one Lightning
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  Express. What is called a fast train on the schedule may very probably be
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  the slowest train of all. If then you leave the Lightning Express at eleven
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  hours fifty five minutes to day, it will be to take it again at
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  eleven hours fifty six minutes tomorrow, or any subsequent day for the next year
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  that you may choose. If you take another train at another hour, it
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  is most likely only to be overtaken by the Lightning Train before twenty hours have
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  gone, and you must sacrifice your palace if you cease to ride on the
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  Lightning For all that, and for all that, the two travelers did a
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  light at Herne. Do you remember in the old Geography's Arctic Ocean seen by
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  mister Herne. He must have been another Herne than this Herne, This unknown
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  hern has given his name to a place where the H and T C crosses
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  the eye. And and if you do not know what that means, it
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  is not my fault, but the crime of the teacher who taught you geography.
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  And here, on a level prairie is a station house, which is
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  what people there call a hotel, what in old Yankee times men would have
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  called a tavern. And there are the other accessories of a junction. And
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  here, on a lovely morning, the girls took their lives in their hands,
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  and also took the botany books and the sketch books and the colors,
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  and walked into the infinite. You cannot do this long when you start from
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  a beach, because you find the water cold, and you must come back
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  to the finite. On a prairie you can keep on longer. Fences were
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  left at once. Tracks of cows vanished soon, and then blazes of yellow
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  flowers, flushes of pink flowers, blue streaks of flowers unnamed, all lapped
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  in the eternal emerald green, not without clumps of trees, Oh, ignorant
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  Yankee. And in such a clumpy girls encamped and took out the paints and
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  blotched in pink madder and rose madder, and naples yellow, and all the
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  yellows, and tried all the greens and purples, and indeed all the colors
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  of the prism, in the hope to carry something home, of the glories
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  of a prairie in spring such a morning. Think how they would never have
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  known what they lost had they not spent that morning in herne. Just a
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  word here for the clean napkins and bright spoons, and crisp radishes, and
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  thoughtful table service of their dinner there. But we must not stop, No,
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  not for dinners or for flowers. On and on, on and on
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  till we are waked our second morning. As a chattering englishman wakes his wife
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  in eight and nine, saying that it's very like a park at Hell,
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  My dear, I don't want to live here, was her wretched groan in
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  reply. But perhaps she changed her mind afterwards. For Effie and for Hester.
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  Though half of Hester's heart was in Saint Auguste, Austin had a thousand
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  charms. No nobody could call that hotel a palace, though Austin is the
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  capital of an empire. But the friends who took care of them the pretty
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  homes, the lovely gardens, the charming drives made them forget the hotel,
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  which, indeed, from morning to night they hardly saw what fate had bent
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  them to go to San Antonio. Why not find some quiet lodging here,
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  a little out of the streets of Austin, and nestled down for the springtime,
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  the sketching, the painting, for the rest, which they had been
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  madly pursuing so long. Just as at Arcady, it seemed so stupid to
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  go farther. At Austin, it seemed as if they had all they asked
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  for when they left home. All Austin was crazy about the choice of a
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  United States senator, not that anybody seemed to care much about United States politics.
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  But here was an honorable post for six years to be given to someone
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  who deserved well of his country. Ah, missus Epgar, said a gentleman
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  to Effie ten years. Hence, you will not have to trouble yourself who
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  shall be your president. We will choose him for you. In Texas.
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  In truth, the population of the Empire of Texas doubles every five years.
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  In eighteen seventy it was eight hundred thousand. In eighteen seventy five. They
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  say it was one million, six hundred thousand. The hotel parlor brought together
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  all the nationalities of the world again, as different people of rather higher social
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  grade than the girls had seen on the trains, were making their arrangements for
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  new homes. What a repertoire of music that piano repeats as the year goes
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  by. Here were the English family, whom the waiters would call the member
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  of Parliament. Here were some Italians from Memphis, strange to say, not
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  from Genoa. Here were gentlemen and ladies from the ends of the earth.
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  And the scrap which Effie wrote down her last night in Austin was not a
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  camp meeting song, nor a ballad of the Brazos, but a little air
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  of verdies. All the same. He who sang was an American born,
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  while he sang in the only language he had ever heard at home. Ladon
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  named mobile quile a few mylevento mu dada chainto adi pencieiro ladon emobile qualpiuma alvento
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  muta da ciento ediepenciero sempre jona mabil lijiadro viso in pianto or in riso emensgneiro
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  ladon a mobile qual piumale vento mudada ciento, Ediepencier, Adiepencier, ediepencier a
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  sempre miso, kelli, sefida, quille confida malcantolcore pour mine on sante filicia
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  piano quisu quel seno non liba amore ladon a mobile caulled piumale vento muda de
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  ciento, Ediepencier, Ediepencier, Ediepencier. Woman is changeable, light as a
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  feather, falls as fair weather? Who can believe her? Always a beautiful
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  face, so beguiling we pay or smiling yet a deceiver woman? A woman
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  light as a feather, false as fair weather, who can believe? Oh,
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  it is misery, fondly confiding, tamely abiding her fickle fancies. Always
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  felicity mocks the pursuer, whom as her wooer love ne'er entrances. Woman.
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  A woman light as a feather, false as fair weather, who can believe?
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  End of Chapter twelve.