"'Well,' said the cowboy, 'I'll make a hole in the side of your head so that we can pour it in,' and he began to draw down on milord, and milord said— "'Aw, that'll do; I'll drink it.' "Then the cowboy invited milord's servants to drink, which horrified him. "'They don't drink, you know,' he said. "'Well, we'll see whether they do or not,' said Mr. Cowboy. 'The chances are you don't give 'em a "hopportunity." Come up here, you fellows, and guzzle some,' and the two 'John Henrys,' with a little show of reluctance, but really glad to get a drink, came up, and the cowboy passed a tumbler full of torchlight procession whiskey for milord, and the servants poured for themselves. Then the cowboy made the 'John Henrys' clink glasses with milord, and all drank, and there was great fun. Milord tried after that to be very jolly, and the stimulant assisted him decidedly. But in the coach he fell back into his exclusiveness and retained it throughout, and has probably got it yet. "Now the fact is that, abstractly, the cowboy was wrong in forcing a man to drink who had no desire to do so. But, on the other hand, snobbishness is not the proper thing in this country, and sensible men generally try, while in Rome, to do as Rome does. At any rate, they don't make themselves offensive to the country in which they are travelling." [Illustration] [Illustration] LETTER No. XVI. We leave Cheyenne—Arrival at Omaha—The barber's shop—Narrow escape from having my head shaved—Arrival at Chicago—Niagara Falls. _New York, Nov., 1885._ I have already told you that I am not writing a book of travels, but merely recording my impressions by the way; these have already occupied far more space than I had ever contemplated, and as we are now approaching the more beaten tracks of civilization, I will hasten on to a conclusion. We left Cheyenne on Friday morning at 10.30, and after a continuous run of 516 miles, we "stopped off" at Omaha for a few hours at 10.30 on Saturday morning. Omaha is a great rambling city of 60,000 inhabitants on the western bank of the Missouri. Council Bluffs is an equally flourishing city on the eastern bank. My chief recollection of Omaha is the barber's shop whither I went to get shaved. I had tried to shave myself in the train, but had contrived instead to gash my cheek sufficiently to cause much bloodshed. When the barber had finished shaving me, I asked him just to trim my hair the least bit in the world. He was an hour and a quarter over the job, and as I had been travelling continuously for twenty-four hours with little or no sleep, I fell asleep under his hands. Luckily, I was woke up by an unusual tickling at the back of my head; he was lathering me there, and I am quite sure he meant to shave the whole of my head. "Confound it," I shouted; "what are you doing?"