The Colorado statesman., 1924-05-10
Bedtime Stories in
a Pullman Smoker
The Versatile Porter
.(Lincoln News Servlce)

Several smokers looked up with
surprise when they heard the porter
conyersing in a foreign tongue with
a gentleman who seemed to be on
terms of close friendship with the
railroad man, and when he had gone
forward to answer ring from num-
ber eight, an inquisitive gent, with
the emblem of a Greek letter frater-
nifty in his coat lapel, turned to the
porters friend and said:
Il see that your porter friend is Il
foreigner? Where is he from?"
"Oh no he's real American" was
the dry response.
well, may L inquire what language
you and he were conversing in?" con-
tinued the curious one.
Portuguese" was the curt reply.
Pardon me-" continued the Greek
letter man, land l hope you will not
think that / mean to be impolite, but
IL merely seemed to me that the lam
guage sounded a bit strange. French,
German, or even Italian would have
seemed to be in more common use
among real Americans"
well" responded the porter's
friend, Jim speaks those languages
also; but we chose Portuguese just
then because of the confidential ma
ture of our conversation, knowing
that we were more likely to encoun-
ter travellers who understood French
or German than we were to find those
who could understand Portuguese.
Even so,' he added with a laugh,
you may not have any doubts that
English is still our preference"
The Greek letter man resumed his
cigar, but it was very apparent that
his curiosity was far from satisfied.
He fingered his watch fob for a while.
and then, after the porter had come
back and spoken hasty sentence or
two, this time in German, turned and
asked:
where's the porter from? l never
knew but one colored man who could
speak German as fluently as that;
and he was the college baseball
player against whom our team refused
to take the field when we came North
about six years ago. His team, and
especially the captain, stood by him.
and the game was called off; but not
until he had said some pretty hard
things to our coach, who was from
Germany, in his own language. And
even though I was pretty sore myself
IL
on n university baseball team, which
had booked playing dates with the
best colleges of the South, / could not
help from admiring his versatility of
speech.
Well" replied the porter's conver-
sationalist," this is the same colored
man whom you met on the baseball
field"
Il see." replied the Greek letter
man. "And that goes to show the
foolishness of it all, for with all his
many languages, which he doesn't
really need he's still only a railroad
porter; and, in fact, is much more
useful in that capacity than he would
be in any other"
mo. you're quite mistaken" re-
sponded the porter's friend, with
sarcastic smile. "Jim's an interpre-
ter at the port of New York, ut an
excellent salary, and he was given
special permission to make this trip,
as a porter to assist me in writing a
feature story which the Pullman
Company is going to publish in its ad-
vertising pamphlets. To make every
thing realistically true, each of us is
filling the role of an actual character,
and we're taking close observations
of all the passengers whom we are
meeting on this trip. Watch the pa
pers and you may see something
about yourself
But, who are you?" gasped the
Greek letter man in astonishment.
I'm advertising specialist for the
Pullman Company-and, by the way,
he added, with a revengeful smile,
Pm the former captain of that same
baseball team which you refused to
play against six years ago"
And 1 quickly raised my newspaper
before my face to keep the Greek let
ter man from seeing me laugh.