"
"And which they secure for the most part (except from hotel clerks),
even in this republican land," I answered briskly.
For in my humble opinion, for sound copper-bottomed snobbery,
registered A1 at Lloyd's, give _me_ the free-born American citizen.
We travelled through the States, accordingly, for the next four
months, from Maine to California, and from Oregon to Florida,
under our own true names, "Confirming the churches," as Charles
facetiously put it--or in other words, looking into the management
and control of railways, syndicates, mines, and cattle-ranches. We
inquired about everything. And the result of our investigations
appeared to be, as Charles further remarked, that the Sabeans who
so troubled the sons of Job seemed to have migrated in a body to
Kansas and Nebraska, and that several thousand head of cattle seemed
mysteriously to vanish, a la Colonel Clay, into the pure air of the
prairies just before each branding.
However, we were fortunate in avoiding the incursions of the Colonel
himself, who must have migrated meanwhile on some enchanted carpet
to other happy hunting-grounds.
It was chill October before we found ourselves safe back in New
York, en route for England. So long a term of freedom from the
Colonel's depredations (as Charles fondly imagined--but I will not
anticipate) had done my brother-in-law's health and spirits a world
of good; he was so lively and cheerful that he began to fancy his
tormentor must have succumbed to yellow fever, then raging in New
Orleans, or eaten himself ill, as we nearly did ourselves, on a
generous mixture of clam-chowder, terrapin, soft-shelled crabs,
Jersey peaches, canvas-backed ducks, Catawba wine, winter cherries,
brandy cocktails, strawberry-shortcake, ice-creams, corn-dodger,
and a judicious brew commonly known as a Colorado corpse-reviver.
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