"I managed to straighten the thing out in the minds of my good sisters, but I have never ceased to regret that that correspondent never turned up at my headquarters again. If he had I should have made him think he had fallen in with a herd of the wild jackasses of Abyssinia."
Mention of Loring's experience reminds me of an amusing one of my own that occurred a little later. In the autumn of 1886 I made a leisurely journey with my wife across the continent to California, Oregon, Mexico, and all parts of the golden West. On an equally leisurely return journey we took a train at Marshall, Texas, for New Orleans, over the ruins of the Texas and Pacific Railroad, which Jay Gould had recently "looted to the limit," as a banker described it. Besides myself, my wife, and our child, the only passengers on the solitary buffet sleeping car were Mr. Ziegenfust of the San Francisco _Chronicle_, and a young lady who put herself under my wife's chaperonage. If Mr. Ziegenfust had not been there to bear out my statements I should never have told the story of what happened.
There was no conductor for the sleeping car--only a negro porter who acted as factotum. When I undertook to arrange with him for my sleeping car accommodations, I offered him a gold piece, for in drawing money from a San Francisco bank for use on the return journey, I had received only gold.
The negro seemed startled as I held out the coin.
"I can't take dat, boss," he said. "'Taint worf nuffin."
I made an effort to explain to him that American gold coin was not only the supreme standard by which all values were measured in this country, but that as mere metal it was worth the sum stamped upon it in any part of the earth. Mr. Ziegenfust supported me in these statements, but our combined assurances made no impression upon the porter's mind. He perfectly knew that gold coin was as worthless as dead forest leaves, and he simply would not take the twenty-dollar piece offered him.
We decided that the poor fellow was a fool, and after a search through all the pockets on the car we managed to get together the necessary number of dollars in greenbacks with which to pay for my accommodations. As for what we might want to eat from the buffet--for there were no dining cars in those days--the porter assured me he would "trust me" till we should get to New Orleans, and call upon me at my hotel to receive his pay.