New York, March 24. To-morrow I am to cross the Continent. I am going by helico after all, because I want to crowd in as much sight-seeing as I can. I am sorry, though, to miss the train journey; apparently it is like nothing on earth. The trains only go at twenty miles an hour, on a fabulously broad gauge, and living in them is like living in a hotel. The engines consume their own smoke, and if the weather is fine you spend your time on the top of the carriage, which is all laid out as a flower garden! Each coach is named after the flower that is principally cultivated on the top of it. Life on the train is so quiet that the journey is regularly recommended by doctors to patients who have had a nervous break down. There is always a hospital coach, and it is a favourite joke against the company to declare that when the train reaches its terminus the guard—I mean the “conductor”—has to hand in a list of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. Another humorist assured me that it is only a matter of time before they start granting divorces on these trains; “twenty-five days between stations is a long stretch, you know, Miss Winterhead.” It is really true that they have swimming-baths in summer, and that you can send your clothes to the wash!
I am very sorry to hear about the strike at the College of Heralds. It’s true, of course, that they’ve had to work overtime, and that the salaries are calculated on a hopelessly outworn scale, but I can’t feel they’re likely to get their way. And what will Frank Hopgood do if they don’t take him back after the strike? He had such a promising career in front of him, and I can’t imagine him settling down to a new job....
Washington, April 7. People talk about nothing except the Gum Question here. Mrs. Rivers, my hostess here, who is passionately Clean (you understand what I mean, don’t you? It’s the oddest thing to hear people talking about it, because one’s always hearing things like “We’ll have no Clean Senator in these parts,” or “Mrs. So-and-so isn’t as Clean as she used to be”)—what was I saying? Yes, Mrs. Rivers tells me that the reason why they are so keen on it is that the gum-makers have notoriously been introducing opium into the gum for years past. She says a girl who has the chewing habit is “sucking her Particular Judgement every time,” which I thought a nice phrase. By the way, I have been making a little list of Americanisms to send you: I give them here with the equivalents opposite: