Instead of "hot dogs" the restaurants and drug-stores display in their show windows placards advertising a purely Western edible: "barbecue," sandwiches of grilled pork.

Then, instead of the optimistic "all right" and "O.K." in the conversation of Westerners one hears the no less optimistic but purely local "you bet!" which means "I wager" but is used for all occasions. For example, if you should ask just as a matter of form whether the steak you order on Dinner # 3 is likely to taste good, the girl will answer with a pleasant smile: "You bet!"

But the last and most important indication is—old automobiles, and not merely used ones, but real antiques. Machines of the year 1910 carry on their small wheels the respectable denizens of the West in droves of entire families. Perched in high old Ford coupes farmers in blue overalls with the white threads of all the seams showing, move on their way. The hefty hands of the farmers lie firmly on their steering wheels. Somewhere a family of Negroes is wandering off. In front sits a young Negro; beside him is his wife. In the back seat slumbers the grey-haired mother-in-law, while young piccaninnies examine our yellow New York licence-plate with popping eyes. The family is evidently travelling from afar, because a bucket and a wooden step-ladder are fastened to the machine. Spindle-shanked mules with long ears are pulling village wagons and drays down the road. The drivers, also in overalls, drive standing. Not once throughout the journey did we see a mule driver sitting in his wagon. That seems to be the style—to stand in his vehicle. Then more and more old Fords. Their lines are old-fashioned, a little funny, but at the same time touching. One senses respectability in them. In a curious way they suggest old Henry Ford himself. They are old and thin, but at the same time durable. They inspire confidence and respect.

Ford need have no compunction about being proud of these machines. They are twenty or twenty-five years old, yet they still run, pull, work— these honest, cheap, black horseless carriages. And always, whenever we met or overtook an ancient model, we exclaimed with candid joy:

"There goes another Old Henry!"

The Old Henry can scarcely breathe, everything in it shakes, only tatters are left of the canvas top and nothing but a rusty rim of the spare wheel, yet the old fellow moves on, does his duty, an appealing and somewhat comical automobile veteran.

We are in the West. We have been driving away from winter and toward summer. Thus we gained not only as to the season of the year, but also in time itself. From the Atlantic we moved into the Central Belt, and gained an extra hour on that. It was now ten o'clock in New York, but only nine here. On the road to San Francisco we would move our watches back twice again. From the Midwestern on to the Mountain and then to the Pacific Belt.

At the intersection of three roads, opposite a small cafe made of boards, which advertised as something new that it sold beer not in bottles but in tin-cans, stood a post to which were attached broad arrows with the names of towns. Besides directions and distances, the arrows pointed out that in the West Americans do the same as in the East—they choose for their cities beautiful, dignified, and famous names. It was pleasant to learn in this little town that it was only forty-two miles from there to Eden, sixty-six to Memphis, forty-four to Mexico, and a mere seventeen miles to Paris. But we chose neither Paris nor Memphis. We were looking for the city of Hannibal. The arrow indicated that we should drive to the right, and that it was thirty-nine miles to Hannibal.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Adams, "remind me to tell you this evening about beer in tin-cans. It is a very, very interesting business."

Exactly thirty-nine miles later Hannibal appeared. A cast-iron plaque placed by "The Historical Society of the State of Missouri" before the entrance to the town, announced that here the great humourist, Mark Twain, had spent his childhood, that somewhere in this town were Mark Twain's house, a park with a view of the Mississippi River, monuments, caves, and so forth.

While we were looking for a night's lodging and Mr. Adams was finding out from the lady of the house how business was in the city, how the depression had affected it, and what our landlady, who was a neat old American lady, thought of Roosevelt, it had grown dark. We had to postpone the examination of the sights of the city recommended by the Historical Society of the State of Missouri until the next morning. While the old landlady told us at great length that business in Hannibal was so-so and that a fairly large portion of the city's income was derived from tourists who came to see the Mark Twain relics, that the depression at one time was quite bad but that they managed to get along better than in the East, and that President Roosevelt was a very good man and looked out for the interests of the poor folks, it had grown still darker. That evening we managed to visit only the Mark Twain museum, which was located on the main street.

That was a temporary museum constructed for the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of Mark Twain's birth. It was located in the building of a bank called the Hannibal Trust Company, which had gone bankrupt shortly before the anniversary. That is why the photographs and the various relics were strangely mixed here with office partitions and the steel locks of safety deposit boxes. Over the huge (alas, for ever empty!) safe hung the steering wheel of the river-boat. A wheel just like that had been turned by Mark Twain when in his youth he was a sailor on the Mississippi. Besides us there was one other visitor, but even he had such a sad face that we had no doubt he must have been at one time a depositor of the Hannibal Trust Company and had come here only in order to take one more look at the magnificent and quite empty bank vault where at one time his modest savings had lain.

Photographs hung on the walls. In a special little room stood a bed brought here especially for the anniversary, the bed on which the author died. Everywhere lay manuscripts, first editions of his books, shoes, scarves, and black lacy fans of the little girl who was the model for Mark Twain's " Becky Thatcher." On the whole, the museum had been assembled helter-skelter, and did not present any special interest.

There was likewise in the museum a plaster model of the monument, for the construction of which a national subscription had already been announced. Here the great writer was surrounded by his heroes. Here were fifty figures, if not more. The monument would cost about a million dollars, and at such a comparatively low price would be, judging by the model, one of the most hideous monuments in the world.

We dined, or rather supped, in a lunch-room across from the museum. Mr. Adams, who never drank anything, suddenly ordered beer. The young waiter brought two tin-cans, the kind in which we sell green peas.

"This is a tremendous business," said Mr. Adams, watching the waiter open the tin-cans of beer, "and until now no one could make a go of it. The trouble was with the odour of the tin. Beer demands an oaken barrel and glassware, but you must understand, gentlemen, that it is not convenient to transport beer in bottles, besides being too costly. Bottles take up too much room. They add to the excessive expense of transportation. Recently a lacquer has been perfected which corresponds perfectly to the odour of a beer barrel, if one may say so. By the way, they looked for this lacquer to fill the needs of a certain electric production, and not for the sake of beer. Now they cover with it the inside of tin-cans, and the beer has no foreign taste at all. This is a big business!"