And Conveying This Motley Assortment Of Human Beings, The
Cars Dashed Along, None Of Their Inmates Heeding Each Other, Or Perhaps
Him
" - - Who heeds and holds them all
In his large love and boundless thought."
At eleven we came to an abrupt pause upon the prairie. After waiting
quietly for some time without seeing any vestiges of a station, my friends
got out to inquire the cause of the detention, when we found that a
freight-train had broken down in front, and that we might be detenus for
some time, a mark for Indian bullets! Refreshments were produced and
clubbed together; the "prairie-men" told stories; the hunters looked to
their rifles, and polished their already resplendent chasing; some
Mexicans sang Spanish songs, a New Englander 'Yankee Doodle;' some
guessed, others calculated, till at last all grew sleepy: the trappers
exhausted their stories, the singers their songs, and a Mormon, who had
been setting forth the peculiar advantages of his creed, the patience of
his auditors - till at length sonorous sounds, emitted by numerous nasal
organs, proving infectious, I fell asleep to dream confusedly of 'Yankee
Doodle,' pistols, and pickpockets.
In due time I awoke; we were stopping still, and there was a light on our
right. "We're at Rock Island, I suppose?" I asked sleepily. A laugh from
my friends and the hunters followed the question; after which they
informed me in the most polite tones that we were where we had been for
the last five hours, namely stationary on the prairie.
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