The air here is perfectly wonderful, dry and full of electricity. If your fingers come into contact with anything metallic, like the hot-water pipes, the chandeliers, the stopper of your washing basin, they draw a spark, sharp and vivid. One of the reporters who called here, and to whom I mentioned the fact, was able to light my gas with his finger, by merely obtaining an electric spark on the top of the burner. When he said he could thus light the gas, I thought he was joking. I had observed this phenomenon before. In Ottawa, for instance. Whether this air makes you live too quickly, I do not know; but it is most bracing and healthy. I have never felt so well and hearty in my life as in these cold, dry climates. * * * * * I was all the more flattered to have such a large and fashionable audience at the Grand Opera House to-night, that my _causerie_ was not given under the auspices of any society, or as one of any course of lectures. I lecture in Detroit the day after to-morrow. I shall have to leave Minneapolis to-morrow morning at six o'clock for Chicago, which I shall reach at ten in the evening. Then I shall have to run to the Michigan Central Station to catch the night train to Detroit at eleven. Altogether, twenty-three hours of railway traveling--745 miles. And still in "the neighborhood of Chicago!" * * * * * [Illustration: AN ADVERTISEMENT.] _In the train to Chicago, February 21._ Have just passed a wonderful advertisement. Here, in the midst of a forest, I have seen a huge wide board nailed on two trees, parallel to the railway line. On it was written, round a daub supposed to represent one of the loveliest English ladies: "If you would be as lovely as the beautiful Lady de Gray, use Gray perfumes." _Soyez donc belle_, to be used as an advertisement in the forests of Minnesota! * * * * * [Illustration: "I RETURNED THANKS."] My lectures have never been criticised in more kind, flattering, and eulogistic terms than in the St. Paul and the Minneapolis papers, which I am reading on my way to Chicago. I find newspaper reading a great source of amusement in the trains. First of all because these papers always are light reading, and also because reading is a possibility in a well lighted carriage going only at a moderate speed. Eating is comfortable, and even writing is possible _en route_. With the exception of a few trains, such as are run from New York to Boston, Chicago, and half a dozen other important cities, railway traveling is slower in America than in England and France; but I have never found fault with the speed of an American train. On the contrary, I have always felt grateful to the driver for running slowly. And every time that the car reached the other side of some of the many rotten wooden bridges on which the train had to pass, I returned thanks. CHAPTER XXV.