Yesterday I was not able to write. I was to be aboard the cars all day, & had planned to write you at my leisure; but very soon C asked for my pad, & as I handed it to him I called his attention to the fact that it was pretty thin but would there was probably enough for us both. By & by he came jubilant & said he had ground out 8 letters. And do you know, the puppy had used up every rag of my paper! I was so disappointed & so mad that I spoke my mind rather freely—at least in manner, though not so much in words. (He has never bought one single sheet of paper or an envelop in all these 3½ months—sponges all his stationery (forⒶemendation literature as well as stationery) from the hotels. His body is small, but it is much too large for his soul. He is the pitifulest human louse I have ever known. We came within an ace of missing last night’s engagement because he wouldn’t travel on Sunday. He wouldn’t let Pond carry his trunk ahead on Sunday. We had an immense snowstorm yesterday—snow the entire day & all night. We were 11½ hours making a 7-hour trip.

To-day we are likely to be all day going 3 hours. We’ve got 3 cars & 3 engines. Alongside us, out here in the snowy plains is a Pacific RR train standing still, whose engines cannot budge it a peg.

One of our passengers had the most enormouse cluster-diamond jewelry you ever saw—pins, rings, watch-charms, &c., that are simply colossal, incredible, astounding.

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