After finding all
this out we had to go to the hotel, where, about eleven o'clock, I
crept into bed with every nerve aching from fatigue. The next day was
dark and rainy, and I lay in bed most of it; but when I got up to go
and read I felt only half rested, and was still so tired that it
seemed as though I could not get through.
Those who planned my engagements failed to take into account the
fearful distances and wretched trains out here. On none of these great
Western routes is there a drawing-room car. Mr. Saunders tried in
every way to get them to put one on for us, but in vain. They are all
reserved for the night trains; so that there is no choice except to
travel by night in sleeping cars, or take such trains as I have
described in the daytime.
I had a most sympathetic audience in Cincinnati; they all seemed
delighted and begged me to come again. The next day George took us for
a drive out to Walnut Hills, where we saw the seminary buildings, the
house where your sisters were born, and the house in which we
afterwards lived. In the afternoon we had to leave and hurry away to a
reading in Dayton. The next evening another in Columbus, where we
spent Sunday with an old friend.
By this time I am somewhat rested from the strain of that awful
journey; but I shall never again undertake such another. It was one of
those things that have to be done once, to learn not to do it again.
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