By this time we were ready to start. A brand-new locomotive decorated with flowers had backed down awkwardly from the new-laid track to the junction; and we entered what Coe with some pride informed me was the directors’ car. It contained one long saloon, two staterooms, a minute kitchen, and a glass gallery behind. It was amazing how we all got into it; and when we had, I counted three babies, seven old women, and a dog, besides some twenty men. All had brought their luncheon-baskets, and the babies (except that appertaining unto Mrs. Senator Langworthy) were consoled with bottles. After a prodigious deal of whistling, we were off, and Bagdad resumed its quietude--at least, we thought so; but even then a distant shouting was heard, and Colonel Wilkinson, his wife, and two urchin boys were descried, hastening down the track from the direction of the Bagdad Hotel. Judge Hankinson pulled the bell-cord and then thrust his head out of a window and roared to the engineer. “Stop, driver, it’s Colonel Wilkinson. How are you, colonel?” he added to that gentleman, who had arrived, and was mopping himself with a red silk handkerchief, his wife and offspring still some laps behind. “Almost thought you’d be left.” “Great heavens, I wish he was!” groaned Coe in my ear. “Never mind, the judge hasn’t brought Miss Julia,” said Tim Healy; and this time we were really off. I have neither time nor memory to describe that day; though it was very funny while it lasted, perhaps all the funnier that there was no one to share the humor of it. Everybody was great on the development of the country, and everybody made speeches. We stopped at least twenty times in the first fifteen miles to look at a seam of coal, or a field of iron, or a marble quarry (suitable for the Alhambra Palace or the new State Capitol, sir), or, at least, one of the most wonderful mineral springs of the world--only waiting the completion of Colonel Coe’s line of railroad to become another Saratoga. At all these places we got off the train, and went in a long, straggling, irregular file to inspect, Mrs. Senator Langworthy ruthlessly interrupting the repast of her youngest-born at such moments, and leaving him upon a car-seat in charge of the fireman. At the quarry or mineral spring the proprietor would take his turn in making a little stump speech, standing on the edge and gesticulating into the pool, while the rest of us stood grouped around the margin. Meantime Miss May Bruce and Raoul would go to walk in the woods; and we would hear the engine whistling wildly for us to return. It was a novel interruption to a flirtation, that railway-whistle; but everybody looked upon us amiably as we hurried down to the track; live and let live, and take your time for happiness; no schedule time, as at Salem.