"What have we," I thought, "an anarchist ?" But with the inexperience and fearlessness of youth, I entered into a most delightful conversation in German with him.

I found him rather an extraordinarily well educated gentleman and he said he lived in Nevada, but had been over to Vienna to place his little boy at a military school, "as," he said, "there is nothing like a uniform to give a boy self-respect." He said his wife had died several months before.

I congratulated myself that the occupant of the upper berth was at least a gentleman.
The next day, as we sat opposite each other chatting, always in German, he paused, and fixing his eyes rather steadily upon me he remarked: "Do you think I put on mourning when my wife died?
no indeed, I put on white kid gloves and had a fiddler and danced at the grave.

All this mourning that people have is utter nonsense." I was amazed at the turn his conversation had taken and sat quite still, not knowing just what to say or to do.
After awhile, he looked at me steadily, and said, very deferentially, "Madame, the spirit of my dead wife is looking at me from out your eyes." By this time I realized that the man was a maniac, and I had always heard that one must agree with crazy people, so I nodded, and that seemed to satisfy him, and bye and bye after some minutes which seemed like hours to me, he went off to the smoking room.
The tension was broken and I appealed to a very nice looking woman who happened to be going to some place in Nevada near which this Doctor lived, and she said, when I told her his name, "Why, yes, I heard of him before I left home, he lives in Silver City, and at the death of his wife, he went hopelessly insane, but," she added, "he is harmless, I believe." This was a nice fix, to be sure, and I staid over in her section all day, and late that night the Doctor arrived at the junction where he was to take another train.

So I slept in peace, after a considerable agitation.
There is nothing like experience to teach a young woman how to travel alone.
In San Francisco I learned that I could now go as far as Los Angeles by rail, thence by steamer to San Diego, and so on by stage to Fort Yuma, where my husband was to meet me with an ambulance and a wagon.
I was enchanted with the idea of avoiding the long sea-trip down the Pacific coast, but sent my boxes down by the Steamer "Montana," sister ship of the old "Newbern," and after a few days' rest in San Francisco, set forth by rail for Los Angeles.