Ashtabula weekly telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1880-1886, 1880-07-23
The Travelling Tyrant.

AMONG our leading fiends there is no
one who surpasses in effective malignity
the sleeping-car porter. 1t is his duty
TO attend to the discomfort of travellers
and in the discharge thereof he displays
an unwearied assiduity which has made
countless thousands swear.
Every sleeping-car is nOminally in
charge of special conductor, a gor-
geous being, with an ornamented cap,
who disappears from view when the
train starts and is not seen again until
morning. The real despot of the Sleep
ing car is the colored porter, who, as
soon the conductor has gone into anoth-
er car to make himself comfortable, as
sumes unlimited authority. The mo-
ment it is dark, he puts his passengers
to bed. No matter how anxious trav-
eler may be to sit up dntil 10 O'Clock in
order TO pursue an innocent converse
ton with o young lady, the porter ap-
proaches him at o'clock and remarks.
awe want to take up the beds now,
sah!" With the abjectness of spirit
characteristic of American travellers,
the unfortunate man never dreams of
disputing the pOrter's authority, but
promptly rises and balances himself un-
easily against a neighboring berth
while his bed is put in order. The OBJ
ject of the porter in thus requiring his
passengers to go to bed at o'clock is
readily perceived. The sooner they are
out of the way the sooner he can go TO
bed himself. What to him is the wall
of the wretched traveller who is
thrust into a sitting berth hours before
he can by any possibility go to sleepP
What cares he for the disappointment
of the young man and the young wo-
man who had expected to enjoy each
others society during the eveningP He
knows that il he orders the passengers
to go to bed they will not dare to DISC
hey him, and his own personal comfort
is the only object which is dear to
him.
AS soon as the passengers are in bed
the porter takes away their shoes, not
necessarily with a view to blacking
them, but as a guarantee that they will
not venture to get out of bed without
permission. These shoes he takes to
his private den at the end of the car,
where he spends little time in mixing
them, and then prepares for sleep. As a
rule, the porter does not snore, because
he holds that the duty of snoring prop
erly belongs to the passengers. Ii, how
ever, as sometimes happens, no passen-
ger volunteers to snore, the porter
demonstrates the fearful power of the
African nose by snoring with a sus-
tanned vigor that no ordinary travelling
nose can hope to emulate. Before go
ing TO sleep the porter has, of course,
closed all the ventilators if tits summer,
and stirred up the fires II it is winter,
thus making sure that his victims shall
suffer from heat and gain as little sleep
as possible for their money. What with
the heat and the noise the passengers
rarely manage to fall asleep before u
O'Clock, by which time the porter, re-
freshed by his nap, rouses himself and
begins his midnight round He stops at
every berth, and, shaking the sleeping
passenger, wakes him up to ask him,
"Was It you, sab, that was wanting TO
get out hereP' Of course no one wants
to get out, as the porter perfectly well
knows, but 1t is q part of his fiendish
system to wake every body at midnight,
and thus prevent them from forgetting
their miseries in sleep.
When his midnight round is finished
the porter returns to his den and takes
a sound nap. Long experience has
taught him that a passenger who is
walked up at midnight will fall asleep
again at about o'clock a. m. Accord
ingly he sleeps until nearly 4 O'Clock,
when he begins with malignant delight
the process Of getting his passengers out
of bed. He informs every one that
"We're most there, sab, without at
taching the slightest meaning to the
word ''there, and then "We're want
ing to put them beds away now, sah."
The meek passenger, believing that he
must be on the point of arriving at the !
station where breakfast is TO be had, |
dresses huTriedly, spends half an hour
in general shoe exchange with his fell |
lgW-travelers, and then finds that he has