The Life and Adventures of Nat Love Read Online Free Page A

stationery and everything needful. He can write his letters and hand them to the porter to mail and continue his perusal of the morning paper. If he gets hungry he has but to step in the dining car, where he will find viands fit for a king. If he wants a shave or a haircut, the barber is in the next car. If he wants to view the scenery en route, the observation car is but a few steps away. When he gets sleepy and wishes to retire he presses the electric button at his elbow and the porter will do the rest, but if he prefers to lay in his luxurious bed and read, he has but to turn on the electric light at his bedside and he can read as long as he pleases, and when he arrives at San Francisco he will be cleanly shaven, nicely brushed, with his shoes freshly shined, and on the outside of a good breakfast, ready to tackle at once the business or the pleasure that brought him across the continent. Or, if the traveler prefers, he may swing aboard the magnificently equipped and royally appointed Los Angeles Limited, one of the finest through trains that this mundane sphere can boast. Catch this train in Chicago, which you may do any day in the year, and it will carry you with safety, speed and comfort over the fertile farms, meadows and plains; through the City of the Saints on the second day; then around the Great Dead Sea of America, over the sage brush plains and grazing ranges of southern Nevada, and into the Land of Sunshine and Flowers and the City of the Angels on the third day after leaving your home in Chicago.
    What a contrast to the mode of travel our grandfathers were forced to adopt, a decade ago, when the old ox team and the prairie schooner wended its slow way over the mountains and plains, over trails in every turn of which lurked danger and death. "Verily the sun do move." During my service with the Pullman company I have traveled from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Gulf of Mexico to the borders of Canada, over nearly all the many different lines of railroad that makes the map of North America look like a spider had been crawling over it in search of a fly. I have visited all the principal cities and towns where the sound of the bell and the whistle is heard, and I have in a great measure satisfied my desire to see the country. Among the great lines of railway over which I have traveled are the Union Pacific, whose overland limited, the Atlantic Express and the Portland-Chicago Special, are the acme of quick, safe and comfortable travel. The overland limited is electric lighted, steam heated and contains every known luxury and convenience of travel. The Denver and Rio Grande Railroad is noted the world over for its quick time, fine scenery, comfort and safety. The Southern Pacific, the Baltimore &Ohio Southwestern, the Missouri Pacific between St. Louis and all points east all electric lighted trains with observation, parlor, cafe dining cars and Pullman sleeping cars; the Chicago &Northwestern, whose through train service to Chicago and the East from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Salt Lake, Ogden and Denver is not excelled in any land; the Illinois Central Railroad, whose eight track entrance to Chicago from the south along the lake front is one of the triumphs of Yankee railroading, and whose train service is elegant in the extreme. The Pennsylvania lines which will take you from Chicago to New York in eighteen hours and make you feel thoroughly comfortable while doing it. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad, whose lines reach every town and hamlet in the solid South. The Nickel Plate road, the direct line from Chicago to New York, Boston and all points east, all trains of the Nickel Plate road arrive and depart from the new LaSalle Street station, one of the finest railroad stations in the country. The Santa Fe, from whose trains you can view some of the finest scenery in the Rocky Mountains, including the Grand Canyon of Arizona, a mile deep, thirteen miles wide, two hundred and seventeen miles