The four had the next table to us at lunch, and they seemed all at sixes and sevens with one another, the elderly lady glaring at her young husband, and the uncle frowning at the niece, while the nephew had just the look of Hurstbridge when Mademoiselle scolds him unjustly.  It was dreadful for them, wasn’t it, Mamma? and not a soul to blame.

Still in the train.

DEAREST MAMMA,—­You can’t think what interesting country we are going through.  We woke yesterday morning and peeped out about five to see the most perfect desolation one could imagine,—­much more grim than the Egyptian desert:  vast unending plains of uneven ground, with a rough dried drab grass in splodges, and high scrub.  Not a bird or animal in all these hundreds of miles, only desolation; generally perfectly flat, but here and there rising ground and rough hills.  The Senator says it is the end of the ranch country, but we have seen no sign of cattle or any beast, and what could they eat?  At long intervals we have passed a few board shanties like card houses grouped together near the track; just fancy living there, Mamma!  Even with the nicest young man in the world it would be a trial, wouldn’t it?  And those Mormons crossed it all in waggons!  And we are finding it quite long in a train!  It is still going on, and now the surface is a little different; low hills are sticking up just like elephants’ backs, and the same colour; no ranches are here or any living thing.  We get into our drawing-room, all of us, and the Senator tells us stories of his young days, too exciting, they must have been, when he came through here before all the railway was built.  No wonder he is so splendid a character now, having had to be so strong and fearless all his life.  Every word he says is interesting, and perfectly vivid and true; and his views on every subject that is discussed are common-sense and exact.  He has no prejudices, and is not touchy.  He can see his own nation’s faults as well as ours, and his first thought is to appreciate the good qualities.

He says there is a very grave danger to the country in the liberty of the press, which has a most debasing influence by printing all the sensational news, and encouraging the interest in these things in the youthful mind.  It must bring a paltry taint into the glorious freedom of the true American spirit, but that will right itself.  He says:  “They are too darned sane to suffer a scourge when once they begin to see its fruits.”  And while the rest were in the observation car after tea he talked to me of happiness.  Happiness, he said, was the main and chief object in life, and yet nine-tenths of the people of the world throw it away for such imitation pleasure; and you can’t often catch it again once you have lost it.