For nine days and nine nights in succession, on one occasion, we never slept out of the carriages or got out of the train except to take a stroll about the station, or a peep into the street of a small town whilst we were waiting, and one got quite accustomed to that nomad and yet civilised mode of existence, where at every halting-place we were supplied with the latest intelligence by the local papers, and made the recipients of some attention or courtesy, visits and compliments (the remarks of the other sort not being many), bouquets of flowers, presents of fruit, and plenty of conversation. But that my critics might say I dilate too much upon the material enjoyment of life, I would describe at length the means which were supplied in the course of these long journeys for animal enjoyment. Never could there be found more attentive and obliging domestics than the coloured men who waited upon us--Arthur and his fellows. There lived in the kitchen compartment of the train, at the end of one of the saloons, a coloured cook, very intelligent and gossipy, full of quaint conceits and dishes and conversation, who commenced life as a slave on a Southern plantation, probably adopted for indoor purposes on account of his smartness. He liberated himself in the course of the war, and marched off with a regiment of Federals in the capacity of cook and body-servant to one of the officers, wherein he saw a great amount of very hard fighting at very close quarters. This adventurous modern Othello was wont to discourse with much animation when he came out for a breath of fresh air on the platform and could find anybody to talk to him, although he could move no more tender heart than that of Sir Henry Green. The gentlemen of the Atchison, &c., Railway, when travelling with us, had a _cordon bleu_ in the saloon--an Italian or Frenchman, I think, or at all events a French-speaking man, who had served also, and would have done credit to an establishment where faults in a _chef_ would not lightly be condoned. In the interchange of courtesies, Mr. White and his friends invited our party now and then to dine in the saloon, which was not "across the way," but up a little, on the line, being the saloon in front of us.