My seat-mate wore a cloak that had started out to bamboozle the American people with the idea that it was worth $100, but it wouldn't mislead anyone who might be nearer than half a mile. I also discovered that it had an air about it that would indicate that she wore it while she cooked the pancakes and fried the doughnuts. It hardly seems possible that she would do this, but the garment, I say, had that air about it. She seemed to want to converse after awhile, and she began on the subject of literature. Picking up a volume that had been left in her seat by the train boy, entitled: "Shadowed to Skowhegan and Back; or, The Child Fiend; price $2," we drifted on pleasantly into the broad domain of letters. Incidentally I asked her what authors she read mostly. "O, I don't remember the authors so much as I do the books," said she. "I am a great reader. If I should tell you how much I have read, you wouldn't believe it." I said I certainly would. I had frequently been called upon to believe things that would make the ordinary rooster quail. If she discovered the true inwardness of this Anglo-American "Jewdesprit," she refrained from saying anything about it. "I read a good deal," she continued, "and it keeps me all strung up. I weep, O so easily." Just then she lightly laid her hand on my arm, and I could see that the tears were rising to her eyes. I felt like asking her if she had ever tried running herself through a clothes wringer every morning. I did feel that someone ought to chirk her up, so I asked her if she remembered the advice of the editor who received a letter from a young lady troubled the same way. She stated that she couldn't explain it, but every little while, without any apparent cause, she would shed tears, and the editor asked her why she didn't lock up the shed. We conversed for a long time about literature, but every little while she would get me into deep water by quoting some author or work that I had never read. I never realized what a hopeless ignoramus I was till I heard about the scores of books that had made her shed the scalding, and yet that I had never, never read. When she looked at me with that faraway expression in her eyes, and with her hand resting lightly on my arm in such a way as to give the gorgeous two karat Rhinestone from Pittsburg full play, and told me how such works as "The New Made Grave; or, The Twin Murderers" had cost her many and many a copious tear, I told her I was glad of it. If it be a blessed boon for the student of such books to weep at home and work up their honest perspiration into scalding tears, far be it from me to grudge that poor boon.