Fascinated, we watched his struggles.  Would he master it or would it master him?  But he lost, and it was probably a good thing he did.  If he had swallowed that sneeze it would have drowned him.  His nose jibed and went about; his head tilted back farther and farther; his countenance expressed deep agony, and then the log jam at the bend in his nose went out with a roar and he let loose the moistest, loudest kerswoosh! that ever was, I reckon.

He sneezed eight times.  The first sneeze unbuttoned his waistcoat, the second unparted his hair, and the third one almost pulled his shoes off; and after that they grew really violent, until the last sneeze shifted his cargo and left him with a list to port and his lee scuppers awash.  It made a ruin of him—­the Prophet Isaiah could not have remained dignified wrestling with a sneezing bee of those dimensions—­but oh, how it did gladden the rest of us to behold him at the mercy of the elements and to note what a sodden, waterlogged wreck they made of him!

It was not long after that before we had another streak of luck.  The train jolted over something and a hat fell down from the topmost pinnacle of the mountain of luggage above and hit his friend on the nose.  We should have felt better satisfied if it had been a coal scuttle; but it was a reasonably hard and heavy hat and it hit him brim first on the tenderest part of his nose and made his eyes water, and we were grateful enough for small blessings.  One should not expect too much of an already overworked Providence.

The rest of us were still warm and happy in our souls when, without any whistle-tooting or bell-clanging or station-calling, we slid silently, almost surreptitiously, into the Gare du Nord, at Paris.  Neither in England nor on the mainland does anyone feel called on to notify you that you have reached your destination.

It is like the old formula for determining the sex of a pigeon—­you give the suspected bird some corn, and if he eats it he is a he; but if she eats it she is a she.  In Europe if it is your destination you get off, and if it is not your destination you stay on.  On this occasion we stayed on, feeling rather forlorn and helpless, until we saw that everyone else had piled off.  We gathered up our belongings and piled off too.

By that time all the available porters had been engaged; so we took up our luggage and walked.  We walked the length of the trainshed—­and then we stepped right into the recreation hall of the State Hospital for the Criminal Insane, at Matteawan, New York.  I knew the place instantly, though the decorations had been changed since I was there last.  It was a joy to come on a home institution so far from home—­joysome, but a trifle disconcerting too, because all the keepers had died or gone on strike or something; and the lunatics, some of them being in uniform and some in civilian dress, were leaping from crag to crag, uttering maniacal shrieks.