Part 8 (1/2)

Individually I have experienced so much kindliness and courtesy at the hands of the personnel of our railroads in all parts of the United States that I sometimes get real satisfaction out of sharing with them the discomforts of travel. I have discovered without half trying that there are profound depths of friendliness in them which need to be given only half a chance to manifest themselves. Rarely indeed have I met with discourtesy at their hands, and many a weary hour has been cheered by their native wit. For the most part, naturally, my contact has been with the station agent and the conductor--and the Pullman porter.

While I deplore the abuses of tipping in this and other countries, I have rarely grudged the Pullman porter his well earned extra quarter.

Perhaps the general run of us have not had the time, nor the inclination, to acquaint ourselves with the difficulties of the Pullman porter's job. We don't realize that with a car full of people ten pa.s.sengers will want the car cooled off, ten others will want a little more heat, five will complain that there is too much air, five others will complain that there is too little; and poor Rastus, ground between the two millstones of complaint, has to make a show of pleasing everybody. He above all others would be justified in announcing as his favorite poem those fine old lines:

As a rule a man's a fool: When it's hot he wants it cool; When it's cool he wants it hot-- Always wanting what is not.

I recall one fine old darky once on a train running into Cleveland, who was very unhappy over a complaint of mine that, with a car crowded to the limit with women and children, some cigarette fiend had vitiated what little air there was in the car by smoking in his berth. I was awakened at three o'clock in the morning by the oppressive odor of burning paper and near-perique. There is no mistaking the origin of that aromatic nuisance, and my gorge rose at the boorish lack of consideration that the smoker showed for the comfort and convenience of his fellow travelers. I pressed the b.u.t.ton alongside my berth, and a moment later the porter was peering in at me through the curtains.

”Look here, John,” said I in a stage whisper, ”this is a little too much! Somebody in this car is smoking cigarettes, and I think it's a condemned outrage. With all these ladies on board it seems to me that you ought to insist that the man who can't restrain his pa.s.sion for cigarettes should get off at the next stop and take the first cattle car he finds running to where he thinks he is going.”

”Yas, suh,” returned the porter sadly. ”It's too bad, suh, an' I've tried my bes' to stop 'em twice, suh.”

”Well, by George!” said I, sitting up. ”If they won't stop for you, maybe they will for me. If any man aboard this car thinks he can get away with a nuisance like this--”

”Yas, suh,” said the porter; ”but that's jest whar de trouble comes in, suh. I been after 'em, suh; but it ain't no use. In bofe cases, suh, it was de ladies deirsefs dat was a-doin' all de smokin', suh.”

And he grinned so broadly as I threw myself back on my pillow that when I finally got to sleep again I dreamed of the opening to the Mammoth Cave, through a natural a.s.sociation of ideas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”I have been after 'em, suh; but it ain't no use.”]

Occasionally one finds some trouble in keeping ahead of the Pullman porter in the matter of repartee. There used to be on the night run to Boston a venerable chap, black as the ace of spades, but patriarchal in his dignity, of whom I was very fond. He was as wide awake at all hours of the day and night as though sleep had not been invented. Like most of his cla.s.s, he was inclined to bestow t.i.tles on his charges.

”Yo' got enough pillows, Cap'n?” he asked on one occasion, after he had fixed my berth.

”Yes, Major,” I replied, putting him up a peg higher. ”But it's a cold night, and I think another blanket might come in handy.”

”All right, Cunnel,” said he, adding to my honors. ”I'll git hit right away.”

”Thank you, General,” said I, as he returned with the desired article.

”Glad to serve yo', Admiral,” said he with deep gravity.

”And now, Bishop,” said I, resolved to keep at it until I scored a victory, ”suppose--”

”Hol' on, mistuh!” he retorted instantly. ”Hol' on! Dey ain't mo'n one puhson in de Universe whut's higher 'n a bishop, an' I knows mighty well yo' ain't Him!”

Our dusky brothers not infrequently fill me with a sense of consolation in difficult moments. Two such cases occur to me at this writing; one in my own experience, and the other in a story I heard in the South last winter, the mere thought of which has many times since served to soften my woes in troublesome moments.

The first occurred several years ago, when the steel pa.s.senger cars first came into commission. Being myself of a somewhat inflammable nature, I make it a rule to travel on these in preference to the old-fas.h.i.+oned tinder boxes of ten years ago whenever I can. On this particular occasion, however, on a hurried midwinter night run, I found myself in a highly ornate, lumbering Pullman of the vintage of '68. It was an essentially mid-Victorian affair, and in the matter of decoration was a flamboyant specimen of the early A. T. Stewart period of American interior embellishment.

Those whose memories hark back that far will remember that the Pullman Company's money at that time was largely expended on lavish ornamentation of a peculiarly a.s.sertive rococo style, consisting for the main part of an eruption of gew-gaws which ran riot over the exposed surfaces of the car like a rash on the back of a baby. The external slant of the upper berth in these cars was ever a favorite surface for this particular kind of gew-gawsity, and no occupant of a lower berth known to me ever succeeded in getting safely into bed, or out of it, without having one or more of these lovely patterns imprinted on the top of his head with more force than delicacy. In collisions the occupant of one of these varnish-soaked orgies of fretwork had about as much chance of escaping unscathed as what a dear clerical friend of mine in a lay sermon once characterized as ”a celluloid dog chasing an asbestos cat through the depths of purgatory.” Whenever I find myself on one of these cars I think instinctively of just three things, and in this order--my past life, my possible permanent future, and my accident insurance policy--and try to comfort myself by playing both ends against the middle.

In my haste on this occasion I had not particularly noticed the characteristics of the car until I attempted to remove my shoes to retire. As I sat up after untying the laces I was brought to a painful realization of the old-time nature of the vehicle by having impressed most forcibly upon the top of my head the convolutions of an empire wreath, carved out of pine splints, and embossed with gold leaf, which served to give Napoleonic dignity to the upper berth when not in use.

The jar, plus the ensuing a.s.sociation of ideas, brought to my mind an uneasy realization of the probable truth that the car was of antique pattern, about as solid as any other box of potential toothpicks, and as fireproof as a ball of excelsior soaked with paraffin. At the moment the porter happened to be pa.s.sing with the carpet-stepped ladder to a.s.sist a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound traveling man into the berth overhead, and I addressed him.

”See here, porter!” said I. ”What kind of car do you call this, anyhow?

Isn't this the car Shem, Ham, and j.a.phet took when they moved back to town from Ararat?”

”Yas, suh,” he answered. ”She suttinly am an ol' timah, suh.”