Joe--THREE HUNDRED MILES!
Now that was stage-coaching on the great overland, ten or twelve years
ago, when perhaps not more than ten men in America, all told, expected to
live to see a railroad follow that route to the Pacific. But the
railroad is there, now, and it pictures a thousand odd comparisons and
contrasts in my mind to read the following sketch, in the New York Times,
of a recent trip over almost the very ground I have been describing. I
can scarcely comprehend the new state of things:
"ACROSS THE CONTINENT.
"At 4.20 P.M., Sunday, we rolled out of the station at Omaha, and
started westward on our long jaunt. A couple of hours out, dinner
was announced--an "event" to those of us who had yet to experience
what it is to eat in one of Pullman's hotels on wheels; so, stepping
into the car next forward of our sleeping palace, we found ourselves
in the dining-car. It was a revelation to us, that first dinner on
Sunday. And though we continued to dine for four days, and had as
many breakfasts and suppers, our whole party never ceased to admire
the perfection of the arrangements, and the marvelous results
achieved. Upon tables covered with snowy linen, and garnished with
services of solid silver, Ethiop waiters, flitting about in spotless
white, placed as by magic a repast at which Delmonico himself could
have had no occasion to blush; and, indeed, in some respects it
would be hard for that distinguished chef to match our menu; for, in
addition to all that ordinarily makes up a first-chop dinner, had we
not our antelope steak (the gormand who has not experienced this
--bah! what does he know of the feast of fat things?) our delicious
mountain-brook trout, and choice fruits and berries, and (sauce
piquant and unpurchasable!) our sweet-scented, appetite-compelling
air of the prairies?
"You may depend upon it, we all did justice to the good things, and
as we washed them down with bumpers of sparkling Krug, whilst we
sped along at the rate of thirty miles an hour, agreed it was the
fastest living we had ever experienced.
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