drawing-room, down through the berths of Pullman cars and river steamboats, to an open-air couch of balsam boughs in the Adirondack forests.  My means of locomotion included a safety bicycle, an Adirondack canoe, the back of a horse, the omnipresent buggy, a bob-sleigh, a “cutter,” a “booby,” four-horse “stages,” river, lake, and sea-going steamers, horse-cars, cable-cars, electric cars, mountain elevators, narrow-gauge railways, and the Vestibuled Limited Express from New York to Chicago.

Perhaps it is significant of the amount of truth in many of the assertions made about travelling in the United States that I traversed about 35,000 miles in the various ways indicated above without a scratch and almost without serious detention or delay.  Once we were nearly swamped in a sudden squall in a mountain lake, and once we had a minute or two’s pleasant experience of the iron-shod heels of our horse inside the buggy, the unfortunate animal having hitched his hind-legs over the dash-board and nearly kicking out our brains in his frantic efforts to get free.  These, however, were accidents that might have happened anywhere, and if my experiences by road and rail in America prove anything, they prove that travelling in the United States is just as safe as in Europe.[30] Some varieties of it are rougher than anything of the kind I know in the Old World; but on the other hand much of it is far pleasanter.  The European system of small railway compartments, in spite of its advantage of privacy and quiet, would be simply unendurable in the long journeys that have to be made in the western hemisphere.  The journey of twenty-four to thirty hours from New York to Chicago, if made by the Vestibuled Limited, is probably less fatiguing than the day-journey of half the time from London to Edinburgh.  The comforts of this superb train include those of the drawing-room, the dining-room, the smoking-room, and the library.  These apartments are perfectly ventilated by compressed air and lighted by movable electric lights, while in winter they are warmed to an agreeable temperature by steam-pipes.  Card-tables and a selection of the daily papers minister to the traveller’s amusement, while bulletin boards give the latest Stock Exchange quotations and the reports of the Government Weather Bureau.  Those who desire it may enjoy a bath en route, or avail themselves of the services of a lady’s maid, a barber, a stenographer, and a type-writer.  There is even a small and carefully selected medicine chest within reach; and the way in which the minor delicacies of life are consulted may be illustrated by the fact that powdered soap is provided in the lavatories, so that no one may have to use the same cake of soap as his neighbour.