--Francis O. Ticknor.
The study of maps and time-tables is a far more profitable business than
appears. John Armitage possessed a great store of geographical knowledge
as interpreted in such literature. He could tell you, without leaving his
room, and probably without opening his trunk, the quickest way out of
Tokio, or St. Petersburg, or Calcutta, or Cinch Tight, Montana, if you
suddenly received a cablegram calling you to Vienna or Paris or
Washington from one of those places.
Such being the case, it was remarkable that he should have started for a
point in the Virginia hills by way of Boston, thence to Norfolk by
coastwise steamer, and on to Lamar by lines of railroad whose schedules
would have been the despair of unhardened travelers. He had expressed his
trunks direct, and traveled with two suitcases and an umbrella. His
journey, since his boat swung out into Massachusetts Bay, had been spent
in gloomy speculations, and two young women booked for Baltimore wrongly
attributed his reticence and aloofness to a grievous disappointment in
love.
He had wanted time to think--to ponder his affairs--to devise some way
out of his difficulties, and to contrive the defeat of Chauvenet.
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