And then, through the splendid tropical country, to Marshall. I must return to Marshall, Texas, some day and be disillusioned, or else I shall go down to my grave accusing myself of having passed Paradise in the train, and not "stopped off" there. What an exasperating reflection for a deathbed! I should never forgive myself. But perhaps it is not so beautiful as it seems. In any case studies "from the life" would be immensely interesting. I caught a few glimpses which entertained me prodigiously. There was the negro dandy walking painfully in patent-leather boots that were made for some man with ordinary feet, with a fan in his hand and a large flower in his button-hole, an old stove-pipe hat on his head, and a very corpulent handleless umbrella under his arm. There was another, similarly caparisoned, escorting three belles for a walk in the neighbouring jungle, the ladies all wearing white cloth gloves and black cloth boots that squelched out spaciously as they put their feet down. And alas! there was the black coquette, with her bunch of crimson flowers behind her ear, her black satin skirt and white muslin jacket, her parasol of black satin lined with crimson--and how she flirts up the green slope, with a half-acre smile on her face! She looks back at every other step to see which, if any, of the black men, or the brown, or the yellow, on the station platform is going to follow her expansive charms, and so she disappears, this piebald siren, into the groves, her parasol flashing back Parthian gleams of crimson as she goes. But every one, man, woman, or child, black, brown, or yellow, was a study, so I must go back to Marshall some day.