The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1877-03-31

A SLEEPING.CAR EXPERIENCE.
By BRET HARTE.
It was in q Pullman sleeping car on
q Western road. After that first plunge
into unconsciousnesso which the weary
traveller takes on getting into his berth,
awakened to the dreadful revelation
that had been asleep only two hours.
The greater part of long winter night
was before me to face with staring eyes.
Finding it impossible to sleep, l lay
there wondering . number of things
why, for instance, the Pullman sleep
ing-car blankets we're unlike other
blankets; why they were like squares
cut out of cold buckwheat cakes, and
why they chung to you when you turned
over, and lay heavy on you without
warmth; why the curtains before you
could not have been made opaque,
without being 80 thick and suffocating
why it would not be as well to sit up
all night half asleep in an ordinary
passenger car as to lie awake all night
in q Pullman. But the snoring of my
fellow-passengers answered this 4ues-
ton in the negative.
With the recollection of last nights
dinner weighing on me as hesvily and
coldly as the blankets, began wonder
ing why, over the whole extent of the
continent, there was no local dish; why
the bill of fare at restaurant and hotel
was invariably only weak reflex Of
the metropolitan hostelries; why the
entrees were always the same, only
more or less badly cooked |;
why the travelling American always
was supposed to demand TURKEY and
cold cranberry sauce; why the pretty
waiter girl apparently shuffied your
plates behind your back, and then
dealt them over your shoulder in a
semi-circle, as if they were hand at
cards, and not always q good one?
Why, having done this she instantly re-
tired to the nearest wall. and gazed at
you scornfully, as one who would say,
+" Fair sir, though lowly, am proud ;
if dost imagine that 1 would permit un-
due familiarity of speech, beware!'
And then l began to think of and dread
the coming breakfast; to wonder why
the ham was always cut half an inch
thick, and why the fried egg always re-
sembled glass eye that visibly winked
at you with diabolical dyspeptic sug-
gestions; to wonder if the buckwheat
cakes, the eating of which requires a
certain degree of artistic preparation
and elaboration, would be brought in
as usual one minute before the train
started. And then I had q vivid recol-
lection of fellow-passenger, who, at a
certain breakfast station in Illinois,
frantically enwrapped his portion of
this national pastry in his red bandanna
handkerchief, took it into the smoking
car, and quietly devoured it en- route.
Lying broad awake, could not help
making some observations which I
think are not noticed by the day trav-
eler. First, that the speed of train is
not equal or continuous. That at GER
tain times the engine apparently starts
up, and says to the baggage train be-
hind it, "Come, come, this won't do!
Why, it's nearly half-past two; how in
- shall we get through? Don't you
talk to me. Pooh! pooh!" delivered in
that rythmical fashion which all
meditation assumes on rail-
way train. ErempH gratia: One
night, having raised my window
curtain to look over a moonlit snowy
landscape, as 1 pulled it down the lines
of popular comic song flashed across
me. Fatal error! The train instantly
took it up, and during the rest of the
night I was haunted BY this awful re.
frain: "Pull down the behind, pull
down the behind; somebody's klink
klink. o don't be shoe shoot" Ma.
turally this differs on the different rail.
ways. On the New York Central,
where the road-bed is quite perfect and
the steel rails continuous, 1 have heard
this irreverent train give the words of 8
certain popular revival hymn after this
fashion: "Hold the fort, for I an
Sankey-Moody singers still, wave the
swish swosh back from klinky, klinky
klanky kill" On the New York and
New Haven, where there are many
switches, and the engine whistles al
every cross-road, I have often heard,
''Tommy, make room for your whoopy
that's little clang, bumpity bumpity
boopy, clikitty, clikitty Gang" Poetry,
l fear, Jared little better. One starlit
night, coming from Quebec, as we slip.
ped by virgin forest, the opening lines
of Evangeline flashed upon me. But
all I could make of them was this
"This is the forest prim-eval-eval; the
groves of the pines and the hem-locks-
Observation-Disclosures" The train
was on y ssslowing'' or s'braking" up
at station. Hence the Jar in the
meter. r.- q
I had noticed peculiar Eolian harp
like cry that ran through the whole
train as we settled to rest at last after a
long run-an almost sigh of infinite re-
lief, musical sigh that began in @ and
ran gradually up to r natural, which 1
think most Observant travellers have no.
ticed day and night. No railway official
has ever given me q satisfactory ex-
PLANTATION Of it. As the car, in q rapid
run, is always slightly projected for
ward of its trucks, a practical friend
once suggested to me that it was the
gradual settling back of the Car body to
. state of inertia, which, of course, ev-
cry poetical traveller would reject. Four
o'clock-the sound of boot-blacking by
the porter family apparent from the
toilet room. Why not talk to him?
But, fortunately, l remembered that
any attempt at extended conversation
with conductor or porter was always re-
sented by them as implied disloyalty to
the company they represented. I re-
called that once I had endeavored to
impress upon . conductor the absolute
folly of q midnight inspection of tickets,
and had been treated by him as an es-
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