The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 2 by Harry Furniss (classic novels for teens .TXT) 📕

I could not resist this splendid opportunity to tantalise my Scotch friend and fellow traveller. He sat down beside me and I handed him the wine-card. He wiped his fevered brow[Pg 98] and his parched lips parted in a smile as he ran his eager eye down the list. When he had scanned the names (and prices) I broke in with:

"I say, old fellow, champagne to-day; a magnum of the best—it's my birthday, so hang the expense! Oh, yes, I know it's a ten-pound note, but I do feel this infernal shaking, noise and heat, and when else would we feel better able to appreciate a good sparkling 'tall drink'? I pay, and I insist—you order it and see that we get it!"

My friendly stranger on the other side simply gazed at me without moving a muscle of his face, and said not a word, still I haven't the slightest doubt that he was thoroughly enjoying the joke in his American fashion. My Scotch friend's face brightened up at the prospect of refreshing his parched larynx with a long drink of champagne; but it was difficult to see whether he or the "coloured gentleman" looked the blacker when the latter informed him that the only beverage he could have was ginger ale! Verb. sap.: Never travel on an American railway without your own wine. Surely the railway companies, who justly pride themselves on the way they study the comfort of their travellers, should warn the unwary in time, for it is not everyone who is lucky enough to meet with a good Samaritan as I did.

A friend tells me that some of the "coloured gentlemen-in-waiting" on these cars have an eye for business, and when a stranger is victimised by these stupid and selfish laws, they serve up to him Rhine wine out of a teapot as weak tea!

If you doubt the truth of the following, ask any traveller who has rushed through the States at the rate of two hundred and fifty miles an hour to verify it.

You sit down to the principal meal of the day in the dining car at say six o'clock. Not happening to be an American, you intend to eat your meal in a reasonable time, say an hour, instead of five minutes. Why hurry? What is there to do before retiring to the sleeping car to be jolted sleeplessly about for seven or eight hours? Nothing; so take as long as possible over your meal. You leisurely order a wine from the list, and[Pg 99] it is brought, uncorked and placed by your side. After the soup and fish you think you will take glass No. 1, but no, not a bit of it! You are now rushing through a proclaimed State, and your glass and bottle are promptly removed. Sancho Panza never looked so surprised as you do. To add insult to injury, or rather injury to insult, you are brought that frightful cause of indigestion, "iced water." I have been told "by one who knows" never to touch the ice on these railway cars; it is not safe, though for what reason I cannot at the moment recollect. It comes from some wayside cesspool or out of a rusty copper boiler, or is the refrigerated perspiration off the railway carriage windows, or something dreadful; anyway, it is unsafe. So you look at it and toy with the next course on the chance of flying quickly through this detestable state of narrow-mindedness and broad absurdity. Your patience is rewarded. You fly past some wooden houses and blazing factories and vulgar advertisements of quack medicines, the vendors of which forsooth are those who prohibit a weary traveller from aiding digestion by drinking an innocent and harmless beverage. The "coloured gentleman" returns smiling with the bottle and glass.

"Guess we've cut through that State; this isn't proclaimed."

You drink confusion to the priggish provincial faddist whose State we have just passed, and continue your dinner.

I am a slow drinker. During my late illness, the illness that caused my trip to America, I had to take all my meals dry—allowed to drink nothing whatever, not even a drop of water; so perhaps it is not unnatural that after months of this treatment I should find a difficulty in drinking before my meal is over. So when the above-mentioned incident occurred to me, it so happened that I was in no hurry to raise my glass to my lips. At last I took it up, but before I could transfer any of its contents to the interior of my throat a dusky hand was placed on mine and the glass was removed.

"Sorry, but we're in another proclaimed State now!"

I prayed that one of these fiendish faddists might enter the car at that moment. I passed a solemn resolution that I would pour all the contents of the cruets down his cursed[Pg 100] throat and make hideous caricatures of him all over the wine list!

More wooden houses and their wooden-headed occupants were passed, and at last I was at liberty to have a drink.

Ice is not of necessity pure nor wine impure. If these ignorant fools are unable to drink without proving to the world that Nature intended them for beasts, it is no reason why they should make laws for their betters, particularly for the stranger flying through their country, which they misappropriately call free.

Again I hark back to the laying of railway lines, which I repeat we manage better in England than they do in the States. The sleeper in his berth in an American car is tossed up and down to such an extent that his vocabulary is exhausted in anathematising the sleepers under the rails. It doesn't seem as if the Transatlantic lines are ever going to adopt our thorough system of track-laying. I met a railway expert on the boat going out who had been to England to inspect officially the laying of a railway, and he assured me that if they were to take up all the tracks in America and relay them in our way it would financially break them, enormously rich as the railway kings of the States are.