The cars of this beneficent institution--survivors of a Europe that once seemed divided between tourists and hotel-keepers--outdash the most dashing war correspondents, insinuate themselves wherever civilians are found at all, and once aboard you carry your oasis with you as you do in a Pullman through our own alkali and sage-brush. The steward (his culture is intensive, though it may not extend beyond the telegraph- poles, and includes the words for food in every dialect between Ostend and the Golden Horn) had just brought soup and a bottle of thin Hungarian claret, when the other three chairs at my table were taken by a Rumanian family returning from a holiday in Budapest--an urbane gentleman of middle age, a shy little daughter, and a dark-eyed wife, glittering with diamonds, who looked a little like Nazimova. "Monsieur is a stranger?" said the Rumanian presently, speaking in French as Rumanians are likely to do, and we began to talk war. I asked--a question the papers had been asking for weeks--if Rumania would be drawn into it. "Within ten days we shall be in," he said. "And on which side?" "Oh!" he smiled, "against Austria, of course!" That was in April. When I came through Rumania three months later soldiers were training everywhere in the hot fields; Bucarest was full of officers, the papers and cafes still buzzing with war talk. Rumania was still going in, but since the recapture of Lemberg and the Russian retreat the time was not so sure--not, it seemed, "until after the harvest" at any rate. I asked the Rumanian what he thought about Italy. "Italy began as a coquette. She will end"--he made the gesture of counting money into his hand--"she will end as a cocotte." He waved a forefinger in front of his face. "Elle n'est plus vierge!" he said. The wife demurred. Italy was poor and little, she must needs coquette. After all, il faut vivre--one must live. Something was said of America and the feeling there, and the wife announced that she would like of all things to see America, but--she did not wish to go there with her husband. I suggested that she come with me--an endeavor to rise to the Rumanian mood which was received with tolerant urbanity by her husband, and by the lady who looked like Nazimova with very cheering expressions of assent. "When you return from Constantinople," she flashed back as they left the table, "don't forget!" These were the first Rumanians I had met. They were amiable, they spoke French--it almost seemed as if they had heard the tales that are usually told of their little capital, and were trying to play the appropriate introduction to Bucarest.