Mexico weekly ledger., 1877-04-05
AS LEEPING.CAR EXPERIENCE.
BY BRET

SASSHth% NSA SA
a Western road. After that first plunge
into seriousness which the weary
traveller lakes on getting into his berth,
| awakened TO the dreadful revelation
tlaG l had been asleep only two hours.
The greater part of a long winter night
was before me % face with staring eyes.
Finding it iroossible to sleep, I lay
there wondering a number of things:
why, for instance, the Pullman sleep
ip2-car blankets were unlike other
blaol'ots; 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 so thick and s~uffocating;
why it would not be as well to sit up
all night half asleep in an ordinary
passenger a as to lie awake all right
in q Pullman. But the snoring of my
fellow-passengers answered this ques-
ton in the negative.
With the recollection of last nights
dinner weighing on me as heavily and
coldly as the blankets, | began wonder
ing why, over the whole extent of the
ScIlOl11CllU1 UnSIO was III lOCdl OlSu, WHY
the bill of fare at restaurant and hotel
was invariably only a 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 Ove your shoulder in a
semi-circle, as if they were a hand at
cards, and not always a good oneP
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, I am proud;
if dost imagine that l would permit an
due familiarity of speech, beware!'"
And then | began to think of and dread
the coming breakfast; to wonder why
the ham vas always cut half an inch
thick, and why the fried egg always re-
sembled a glass eye that visibly winked
at you with diabolical dyspeptic sug-
gestions; to wonder if the buckwheat
cakes, the eating of which requires q
certain degree of artistic preparation
dlo bCiIUCI dllOuS "ONId NC pIOu2u Ia
as usual minute before the train
started. And then I had a vivid recol-
lection of a 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 ell route.
Lying broad awake, | could not help
making some observations which |
think are not noticed by the day tray
eler. First, that the speed of a 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
hat rythmical fashion which all
meditation ssum on a rail-
way train. Eremplt grdtiG: One
night, having raised my window
curtain TO look over a moonlit snowy
landscape, as | pulled it down the lines
of a popular comic song flashed across
me. Fatal error! The train instantly
took it up, and during the rest of the
night | was haunted by this awful re-
frain: "Pull down the behind, pull
down the behind; somebody's klink
klink. 0 don't be shoo-shoo!" 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, | have heard
this irreverent train give the words of a
certain popular revival hymn after this
fashion: "Hold the fort, for l am
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 at
every cross-road, | have often heard,
"Tommy, make room for your whoopy!
that's a little clang, bumpity bumpity
boopy, clikitty, clikitty Gang" Poetry,
| fear, Jared little better. One starlit
night. coming from Quebec, as we slip
ped by a virgin forest, the opening lines
of Evangeline flashed upon me. But
all [ 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 rain
was on Y s'slowing" or 'braking'' up
at a station. Hence the jar in the
meter.
l had noticed a peculiar Eolian harp
like cry that a through the whole
train as we settled to rest at last after a
long run-an almost sigh of infinite re-
lief, a musical sigh that began in Cand
ran gradually up to F natural, which l
think most observant travellers have no.
ticed day and night. No railway official
has ever given me a satisfactory ex-
PLANTATION of 1t. AS the car, in a rapid
run, is always slightly projected for
ward of it's trucks, a practical friend
once suggested to me that it was the
gradual settling back of the car body to
a state of inertia, which, of course, ev-
cry poetical traveller would reject. Four
o'clOck-the sound of boot-b backing by
the porter family apparent from the
toilet room. Why not talk to himP
But, fortunately, l remembered that
any attempt at extended conversation
with conductor or porter was always re-
sented by them as implied dislOyalty to