"Well," said he, "how are you getting on? Where do you come from?"
"From Buffalo," said I, pulling a long face.
"What is the matter? Don't you like the Buffalo people?"
"Yes; I liked those I saw. I should have liked to extend my love to a larger number. I had a fizzle; about three hundred people. Perhaps I drew all the brain of Buffalo."
"How many people do you say you had in the hall?" said my friend.
"Then you must have drawn a good many people from Rochester, I should think," said he quite solemnly.
In reading the Buffalo newspapers this morning, I noticed favorable criticisms of my lecture; but while my English was praised, so far as the language went, severe comments were passed on my pronunciation. In England, where the English language is spoken with a decent pronunciation, I never once read a condemnation of my pronunciation of the English language.
I will not appear again in Buffalo until I feel much improved.
[Illustration: "GOING TO PITTSBURG, I GUESS."]
The American railway stations have special waiting rooms for ladies--not, as in England, places furnished with looking-glasses, where they can go and arrange their bonnets, etc. No, no. Places where they can wait for the trains, protected against the contamination of man, and where they are spared the sight of that eternal little round piece of furniture with which the floors of the whole of the United States are dotted.
At Cleveland Station, this morning, I met Jonathan, such as he is represented in the comic papers of the world. A man of sixty, with long straight white hair falling over his shoulders; no mustache, long imperial beard, a razor-blade-shaped nose, small keen eyes, and high prominent cheek-bones, the whole smoking the traditional cigar; the Anglo-Saxon indianized--Jonathan. If he had had a long swallow-tail coat on, a waistcoat ornamented with stars, and trowsers with stripes, he might have sat for the cartoons of _Puck_ or _Judge_.
In the car, Jonathan came and sat opposite me. A few minutes after the train had started, he said:
"Why, certainly; I heard you in Boston ten days ago."
He offered me a cigar, told me his name--I mean his three names--what he did, how much he earned, where he lived, how many children he had; he read me a poem of his own composition, invited me to go and see him, and entertained me for three hours and a half, telling me the history of his life, etc. Indeed, it was Jonathan.