1893.] AN ANXIOUS MOMENT. 61 tickets or letters of any nature or description whatever. It was the housemaid's afternoon out, and she had gone to visit friends on Blue Island Avenue, miles away across the city. She was usually prompt and reliable, and messages or letters or cards were at once brought to my room. It was barely possible, it was thought, that she may have forgotten to do her duty on this one momentous occasion; because, if she ever did forget, it would be at just that time and on that one particular evening. We looked everywhere, the entire family joining in the fruitless search; not a vestige of a railway ticket or a credential was unearthed, and at length we desisted and held a solemn conclave. The last expedient was resorted to: the cook was dispatched to find the housemaid and bring her back, and Mwent into the kitchen to finish getting the dinner. Everybody was tired, anxious, depressed. I had on my travelling-dress, and had carefully secured the No. 10 overshoe, and then I toiled downstairs to wait in the drawing-room and apologise to the family for all the trouble and distress I had caused them. The cook had not returned; but just then there was a sharp whirr of the door-bell. A reporter had arrived and produced the lost documents. The explanation was simple, but incredible. A man had been sent to the district messenger office, and every little loitering wretch assigned to duty on the South Side had been called up, catechised, and made to give an account of himself. The guilty one was found. He was forced to go with the reporter to the identical house at which the packet had been left. It was next door, and the woman, who was my dressmaker, had forgotten to send it in to me! Her servant had received it the evening before. We held our breath, and wondered what possibly could happen next. Very little dinner was eaten, and conversation languished. The last hours passed rapidly by, as they always do; the carriage came, the good-byes were said, I hobbled down the steps, was helped into the vehicle, the door was slammed, and we rolled down the icy street. "Do you realise, what a journey you are undertaking?" said M-, as I put my crutches in the corner. And I replied briefly, but undauntedly, "Yes." At a quarter to ten I was comfortably established in my section of the Pullman car with all my belongings about me, innumerable farewell gifts from friends. fruits, flowers, books, and many creature comforts, after the kindly generous American custom. Then, last of all, M said good-bye. The negro porter made up my berth, and in fifteen minutes I was between the blankets, with a sort of vindictive and evil satisfaction that it was over and I still lived. Presently the steam rushed into the air-brakes 1893.] MY DEPARTURE. 63 with a hiss, the wheels revolved, and we moved slowly out of the great North-Western station. I sat up in my berth, drew back the blind, and looked out as the blue and green signal lights went by. I then said, as solemnly and as feelingly as if I were saying a prayer: “I — am — really off — at- CHAPTER III. FROM CHICAGO TO HAWAII. THE Japanese believe that huge, invisible spirits contend in the upper air for the mastery of human destiny, the one good and the other evil, and when misfortune is paramount the evil genii triumph, when fortune is propitious the good spirits have prevailed. As we rushed away through the night across the Illinois prairies, the demons that had thwarted me for weeks must have looked after the flying train, frowning and gnawing their nails in humiliating defeat. They may even have hissed "Foiled," and so departed. At any rate, my troubles ended from that moment; at least they ended so far as the vexatious miscarriage of my plans were concerned, for the silicate cast, the crutches, and an everpresent ache were still with me. I had insisted that I would get on famously, that the porter would look after me, that friends would be raised up along the journey to aid me in dire extremity. I had put in my bag a package of postcards, upon 64 1893.] MY GUARDIAN ANGEL. 65 which brief messages should be inscribed, giving a sort of bulletin during the three days' journey overland. The next morning at nine o'clock I wrote: "The guardian angel has appeared upon the scene. He is sitting in the seat opposite me, in a grey tweed suit and a travelling-cap. He is sixty, or thereabouts, with snow-white hair, blue eyes, and cheeks as rosy as a winter apple. He is humming 'Annie Laurie' to himself." He proved to It was not a misleading intuition. be a retired Chicago banker of scientific tastes. It may be doubted by the unenlightened that there ever was such a person as a Chicago banker with scientific tastes; but here he was. He had graduated from Yale with honours years before. He had wanted then to devote himself to scientific study; but he had to earn money, and scientific study is not usually financially profitable. All his life he cherished the hope that he might one day realise his aspirations, and they were realised. He made his fortune, and retired for Americans occasionally do retire when they make their fortune, though not often. He had given the years of his leisure to the study of astronomy, and had written much on the subject for scientific journals. He was making his fourth visit to Japan, and he said that it would vary the monotony of a journey that had lost all its novelty to look after me and render me any assistance 5 |