Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays. Robert Louis Stevenson

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       Robert Louis Stevenson

      Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664647276

Table of Contents

       I ACROSS THE PLAINS

       The Emigrant Train

       The Plains of Nebraska

       The Desert of Wyoming

       Fellow-Passengers

       Despised Races

       To the Golden Gates

       II THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL

       The Woods and the Pacific

       Mexicans, Americans, and Indians

       III FONTAINEBLEAU Village Communities of Painters

       I

       II

       III

       IV

       V

       VI

       VII

       IV EPILOGUE TO “AN INLAND VOYAGE” [95]

       V RANDOM MEMORIES

       I.— The Coast of Fife

       VI RANDOM MEMORIES

       II.— The Education of an Engineer

       VII THE LANTERN-BEARERS

       I

       II

       III

       IV

       VIII A CHAPTER ON DREAMS

       IX BEGGARS

       II

       III

       IV

       V

       X LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO PROPOSES TO EMBRACE THE CAREER OF ART

       XI PULVIS ET UMBRA

       I

       II

       XII A CHRISTMAS SERMON

       I

       II

       III

       IV

I

       ACROSS THE PLAINS

       Table of Contents

      LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF AN EMIGRANT BETWEEN NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO

      Monday.—It was, if I remember rightly, five o’clock when we were all signalled to be present at the Ferry Depôt of the railroad. An emigrant ship had arrived at New York on the Saturday night, another on the Sunday morning, our own on Sunday afternoon, a fourth early on Monday; and as there is no emigrant train on Sunday a great part of the passengers from these four ships was concentrated on the train by which I was to travel. There was a babel of bewildered men, women, and children. The wretched little booking-office, and the baggage-room, which was not much larger, were crowded thick with emigrants, and were heavy and rank with the atmosphere of dripping clothes. Open carts full of bedding stood by the half-hour in the rain. The officials loaded each other with recriminations. A bearded, mildewed little man, whom I take to have been an emigrant agent, was all over the place, his mouth full of brimstone, blustering and interfering. It was plain that the whole system, if system there was, had utterly broken down under the strain of so many passengers.

      My own ticket was given me at once, and an oldish man, who preserved his head in the midst of this turmoil, got my baggage registered, and counselled me to stay quietly where I was till he should give me the word to move. I had taken along with me a small valise, a knapsack, which I carried on my shoulders, and in the bag of my railway rug the whole of Bancroft’s History of the United States, in six fat volumes. It was as much as I could carry with convenience