It was so stuffy in our compartment that I stood in the doorway for a few moments near an open window.  My companion was lying down in my berth.  We still had nineteen hours of travel before us with no prospect of sleep, for sleep in those berths and over such a rough road was absolutely out of the question.

Near me (and spitting in the saddest manner out of the open window) stood the meek little American husband of the gray flannel and curl-papers, whose fury at my companion for her quick work with the customs officer knew no bounds.

The gray flannel had gone to bed again in the compartment next to ours.

The precision of this gentleman’s aim as he expectorated through the open window, and the marvellous rapidity with which he managed his diversion, led me to watch him.  He looked tired and cold and ill.  It was still dark outside, and the jolting of the train was almost unbearable.  He had not once looked at me, but with his gaze still on the darkness he said, slowly,

“They can have the whole blamed country for all of me! I don’t want it.”

It was so exactly the way I felt that even though he said something worse than “blamed,” I gave a shriek of delight, and my companion pounded the pillow in her cooperation of the sentiment.

“You are an American and you are Southern,” I said.

“Yes’m.  How did you know?”

“By your accent.”

“Yes’m, I was born in Virginia.  I was in the Southern army four years, and I love my country.  I hate these blamed foreigners and their blamed churches and their infernal foreign languages.  I am over here for my health, my wife says.  But I have walked more miles in picture-galleries than I ever marched in the army.  I’ve seen more pictures by Raphael than he could have painted if he’d ‘a’ had ten arms and painted a thousand years without stopping to eat or sleep.  I’ve seen more ‘old masters,’ as they call ’em, but I call ’em daubs, all varnished till they are so slick that a fly would slip on ’em and break his neck.  And the stone floors are so cold that I get cold clean up to my knees, and I don’t get warm for a week.  Yet I am over here for my health!  Then the way they rob you—­these blamed French!  Lord, if I ever get back to America, where one price includes everything and your hotel bill isn’t sent in on a ladder, and where I can keep warm, won’t I just be too thankful.”

Just then the gray-flannel door banged open and a hand reached out and jerked the poor little old man inside, and we heard him say, “But I was only blaming the French.  I ain’t happy over here.”  And a sharp voice said, “Well, you’ve said enough.  Don’t talk any more at all.”  Then she let him out again, but he did not find me in the corridor.  He found his open window, and he leaned against our closed door and again aimed at the flying landscape, as he pondered over the disadvantages of Europe.