Leaving the main road to Chicago at Clinton Junction, I had the pleasure of waiting at a small country inn until midnight for a freight train.

This was indeed dreary, but, having Mrs.Child's sketches of Mmes.

De Stael and Roland at hand, I read of Napoleon's persecutions of the one and Robespierre's of the other, until, by comparison, my condition was tolerable, and the little meagerly furnished room, with its dull fire and dim lamp, seemed a paradise compared with years of exile from one's native land or the prison cell and guillotine.

How small our ordinary, petty trials seem in contrast with the mountains of sorrow that have been piled up on the great souls of the past! Absorbed in communion with them twelve o'clock soon came, and with it the train.
A burly son of Adam escorted me to the passenger car filled with German immigrants, with tin cups, babies, bags, and bundles innumerable.

The ventilators were all closed, the stoves hot, and the air was like that of the Black Hole of Calcutta.