It was in a Pullman sleeping-car on a Western road. After that first
plunge into unconsciousness which the weary traveler takes on getting
into his berth, I awakened to the dreadful revelation that I had been
asleep only two hours. The greater part of a long winter night was
before me to face with staring eyes.
Finding it impossible to sleep, I lay there wondering a number of
things: why, for instance, the Pullman sleeping-car blankets were
unlike other blankets; why they were like squares cut out of cold
buckwheat cakes, and why they clung 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 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 a Pullman. But the snoring
of my fellow-passengers answered this question in the negative.
With the recollection of last night's dinner weighing on me as heavily
and coldly as the blankets, I began wondering 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 a weak reflex of the
metropolitan hostelries; why the entrees were always the same, only
more or less badly cooked; why the traveling American always was
supposed to demand turkey and cold cranberry sauce; why the pretty
waiter-girl apparently shuffled your plates behind your back, and then
dealt them over your shoulder in a semicircle, as if they were a hand
at cards, and not always a good one? Why, having done this, she
instantly retired to the nearest wall, and gazed at you scornfully, as
one who would say, "Fair sir, though lowly, I am proud; if thou dost
imagine that I would permit undue familiarity of speech, beware!" And
then I 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
resembled a glass eye that visibly winked at you with diabolical
dyspeptic suggestions; to wonder if the buckwheat cakes, the eating of
which requires a certain degree of artistic preparation and
deliberation, would be brought in as usual one minute before the train
started. And then I had a vivid recollection of a fellow-passenger who,
at a certain breakfast station in Illinois, frantically enwrapped his
portion of this national pastry in his red bandana handkerchief, took
it into the smoking-car, and quietly devoured it en route.
Lying broad awake, I could not help making some observations which I
think are not noticed by the day traveler. First, that the speed of a
train is not equal or continuous. That at certain times the engine
apparently starts up, and says to the baggage train behind it, "Come,
come, this won't do! Why, it's nearly half-past two; how in h-ll shall
we get through? Don't you talk to ME. Pooh, pooh!" delivered in that
rhythmical fashion which all meditation assumes on a railway train.
Exempli gratia: One night, having raised my window-curtain to look
over a moonlit snowy landscape, as I 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 I was haunted by
this awful refrain: "Pull down the bel-lind, pull down the bel-lind;
simebody's klink klink, O don't be shoo-shoo!" Naturally this differs
on the different railways. On the New York Central, where the road-bed
is quite perfect and the steel rails continuous, I have heard this
irreverent train give the words of a certain popular revival hymn after
this fashion: "Hold the fort, for I am Sankey; Moody slingers still.
Wave the swish swash 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, I have often heard, "Tommy make room for
your whooopy! that's a little clang; bumpity, bumpity, boopy, clikitty,
clikitty, clang." Poetry, I fear, fared little better. One starlit
night, coming from Quebec, as we slipped by a virgin forest, the
opening lines of Evangeline flashed upon me. But all I could make of
them was this: "This is the forest primeval-eval; the groves of the
pines and the hemlocks-locks-locks-locks-loooock!" The train was only
"slowing" or "braking" up at a station. Hence the jar in the metre.
I had noticed a peculiar Aeolian 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 relief, a musical sigh that began in C and ran
gradually up to F natural, which I think most observant travelers have
noticed day and night. No railway official has ever given me a
satisfactory explanation of it. As the car, in a rapid run, is always
slightly projected forward of its 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, every poetical traveler would
reject. Four o'clock the sound of boot-blacking by the porter faintly
apparent from the toilet-room. Why not talk to him? But, fortunately,
I remembered that any attempt at extended conversation with conductor
or porter was always resented by them as implied disloyalty to the
company they represented. I recalled that once I had endeavored to
impress upon a conductor the absolute folly of a midnight inspection of
tickets, and had been treated by him as an escaped lunatic. No, there
was no relief from this suffocating and insupportable loneliness to be
gained then. I raised the window-blind and looked out. We were
passing a farm-house. A light, evidently the lantern of a farm-hand,
was swung beside a barn. Yes, the faintest tinge of rose in the far
horizon. Morning, surely, at last.
We had stopped at a station. Two men had got into the car, and had
taken seats in the one vacant section, yawning occasionally and
conversing in a languid, perfunctory sort of way. They sat opposite
each other, occasionally looking out of the window, but always giving
the strong impression that they were tired of each other's company. As
I looked out of my curtains at them, the One Man said, with a feebly
concealed yawn:—
"Yes, well, I reckon he was at one time as poplar an ondertaker ez I
knew."
The Other Man (inventing a question rather than giving an answer, out
of some languid, social impulse): "But was he—this yer ondertaker—a
Christian—hed he jined the church?"
The One Man (reflectively): "Well, I don't know ez you might call him a
purfessin' Christian; but he hed—yes, he hed conviction. I think Dr.
Wylie hed him under conviction. Et least that was the way I got it
from HIM."
A long, dreary pause. The Other Man (feeling it was incumbent upon him
to say something): "But why was he poplar ez an ondertaker?"
The One Man (lazily): "Well, he was kinder poplar with widders and
widderers—sorter soothen 'em a kinder, keerless way; slung 'em suthin'
here and there, sometimes outer the Book, sometimes outer hisself, ez a
man of experience as hed hed sorror. Hed, they say (VERY CAUTIOUSLY),
lost three wives hisself, and five children by this yer new
disease—dipthery—out in Wisconsin. I don't know the facts, but
that's what's got round."
The Other Man: "But how did he lose his poplarity?"
The One Man: "Well, that's the question. You see he interduced some
things into ondertaking that waz new. He hed, for instance, a way, as
he called it, of manniperlating the features of the deceased."
The Other Man (quietly): "How manniperlating?"
The One Man (struck with a bright and aggressive thought): "Look yer,
did ye ever notiss how, generally speakin', onhandsome a corpse is?"
The Other Man had noticed this fact.
The One Man (returning to his fact): "Why there was Mary Peebles, ez
was daughter of my wife's bosom friend—a mighty pooty girl and a
professing Christian—died of scarlet fever. Well, that gal—I was one
of the mourners, being my wife's friend—well, that gal, though I
hedn't, perhaps, oughter say—lying in that casket, fetched all the way
from some A1 establishment in Chicago, filled with flowers and
furbelows—didn't really seem to be of much account. Well, although my
wife's friend, and me a mourner—well, now, I was—disappointed and
discouraged."
The Other Man (in palpably affected sympathy): "Sho! now!"
"Yes, SIR! Well, you see, this yer ondertaker, this Wilkins, hed a way
of correctin' all thet. And just by manniperlation. He worked over
the face of the deceased ontil he perduced what the survivin' relatives
called a look of resignation,—you know, a sort of smile, like. When
he wanted to put in any extrys, he perduced what he called—hevin'
reglar charges for this kind of work—a Christian's hope."
The Other Man: "I want to know."
"Yes. Well, I admit, at times it was a little startlin'. And I've
allers said (a little confidentially) that I had my doubts of its being
Scriptoorl, or sacred, we being, ez you know, worms of the yearth; and
I relieved my mind to our pastor, but he didn't feel like interferin',
ez long ez it was confined to church membership. But the other day,
when Cy Dunham died—you disremember Cy Dunham?"
A long interval of silence. The Other Man was looking out of the
window, and had apparently forgotten his companion completely. But as
I stretched my head out of the curtain I saw four other heads as
eagerly reached out from other berths to hear the conclusion of the
story. One head, a female one, instantly disappeared on my looking
around, but a certain tremulousness of her window-curtain showed an
unabated interest. The only two utterly disinterested men were the One
Man and the Other Man.
The Other Man (detaching himself languidly from the window): "Cy
Dunham?"
"Yes; Cy never hed hed either convictions or purfessions. Uster get
drunk and go round with permiscous women. Sorter like the prodigal
son, only a little more so, ez fur ez I kin judge from the facks ez
stated to me. Well, Cy one day petered out down at Little Rock, and
was sent up yer for interment. The fammerly, being proud-like, of
course didn't spare no money on that funeral, and it waz—now between
you and me—about ez shapely and first-class and prime-mess affair ez I
ever saw. Wilkins hed put in his extrys. He hed put onto that
prodigal's face the A1 touch,—hed him fixed up with a 'Christian's
hope.' Well, it was about the turning-point, for thar waz some of the
members and the pastor hisself thought that the line oughter to be
drawn somewhere, and thar was some talk at Deacon Tibbet's about a
reg'lar conference meetin' regardin' it. But it wasn't thet which made
him onpoplar."
Another silence; no expression nor reflection from the face of the
Other Man of the least desire to know what ultimately settled the
unpopularity of the undertaker. But from the curtains of the various
berths several eager and one or two even wrathful faces, anxious for
the result.
The Other Man (lazily recurring to the fading topic): "Well, what made
him onpoplar?"
The One Man (quietly): "Extrys, I think—that is, I suppose, not
knowin'" (cautiously) "all the facts. When Mrs. Widdecombe lost her
husband, 'bout two months ago, though she'd been through the valley of
the shadder of death twice—this bein' her third marriage, hevin' been
John Barker's widder—"
The Other Man (with an intense expression of interest): "No, you're
foolin' me!"
The One Man (solemnly): "Ef I was to appear before my Maker to-morrow,
yes! she was the widder of Barker."
The Other Man: "Well, I swow."
The One Man: "Well, this Widder Widdecombe, she put up a big funeral
for the deceased. She hed Wilkins, and thet ondertaker just laid
hisself out. Just spread hisself. Onfort'natly,—perhaps fort'natly
in the ways of Providence,—one of Widdecombe's old friends, a doctor
up thar in Chicago, comes down to the funeral. He goes up with the
friends to look at the deceased, smilin' a peaceful sort o' heavinly
smile, and everybody sayin' he's gone to meet his reward, and this yer
friend turns round, short and sudden on the widder settin' in her pew,
and kinder enjoyin, as wimen will, all the compliments paid the corpse,
and he says, says he:—
"'What did you say your husband died of, marm?'
"'Consumption,' she says, wiping her eyes, poor critter.
'Consumption—gallopin' consumption.'
"'Consumption be d—d,' sez he, bein' a profane kind of Chicago doctor,
and not bein' ever under conviction. 'Thet man died of strychnine.
Look at thet face. Look at thet contortion of them fashal muscles.
Thet's strychnine. Thet's risers Sardonikus' (thet's what he said; he
was always sorter profane).
"'Why, doctor,' says the widder, 'thet—thet is his last smile. It's a
Christian's resignation.'
"'Thet be blowed; don't tell me,' sez he. 'Hell is full of thet kind
of resignation. It's pizon. And I'll—' Why, dern my skin, yes we
are; yes, it's Joliet. Wall, now, who'd hey thought we'd been nigh
onto an hour."
Two or three anxious passengers from their berths: "Say; look yer,
stranger! Old man! What became of—"
But the One Man and the Other Man had vanished.
