Beyond
came an incredibly large region, much like the steppes of Siberia, I
fancy: vast uninhabited stretches of heath and down, with but here and
there some rude settlement about which the poor peasants would eagerly
assemble as our train passed through. I could not wonder that our own
travellers have always spoken so disparagingly of the American
civilization. It is a country that would never do with us.
Although we lived in this train a matter of nearly four days, I fancy
not a single person dressed for dinner as one would on shipboard. Even
Belknap-Jackson dined in a lounge-suit, though he wore gloves
constantly by day, which was more than I could get Cousin Egbert to
do.
As we went ever farther over these leagues of fen and fell and rolling
veldt, I could but speculate unquietly as to what sort of place the
Red Gap must be. A residential town for gentlemen and families, I had
understood, with a little colony of people that really mattered, as I
had gathered from Mrs. Effie. And yet I was unable to divine their
object in going so far away to live. One goes to distant places for
the winter sports or for big game shooting, but this seemed rather
grotesquely perverse.
Little did I then dream of the spiritual agencies that were to insure
my gradual understanding of the town and its people.
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