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This harsh speech showed that the subject was about exhausted, and someone, a man who had come in only in time to hear the last speaker, had just hazarded the remark, in a faint imitation of an English accent, that the sub-officials in this country were a surly, ill-conditioned lot, anyhow, and always were as rude as they dared to be, when Lesponts, who had looked at the speaker lazily, said:

“Yes, I have spent a Christmas on a sleeping-car, and, strange to say, I have a most delightful recollection of it.”

This was surprising enough to have gained him a hearing anyhow, but the memory of the occasion was evidently sufficiently strong to carry Lesponts over obstacles, and he went ahead.

“Has any of you ever taken the night train that goes from here South through the Cumberland and Shenandoah Valleys, or from Washington to strike that train?”

No one seemed to have done so, and he went on:

“Well, do it, and you can even do it Christmas, if you get the right conductor. It’s well worth doing the first chance you get, for it’s almost the prettiest country in the world that you go through; there is nothing that I’ve ever seen lovelier than parts of the Cumberland and Shenandoah Valleys, and the New River Valley is just as pretty,–that background of blue beyond those rolling hills, and all,–you know, McPheeters?” McPheeters nodded, and he proceeded:

“I always go that way now when I go South. Well, I went South one winter just at Christmas, and I took that train by accident. I was going to New Orleans to spend Christmas, and had expected to have gotten off to be there several days beforehand, but an unlooked-for matter had turned up and prevented my getting away, and I had given up the idea of going, when I changed my mind: the fact is, I was in a row with a friend of mine there. I decided, on the spur of the moment, to go, anyhow, and thus got off on the afternoon train for Washington, intending to run my luck for getting a sleeper there. This was the day before Christmas-eve and I was due to arrive in New Orleans Christmas-day, some time. Well, when I got to Washington there was not a berth to be had for love or money, and I was in a pickle. I fumed and fussed; abused the railroad companies and got mad with the ticket agent, who seemed, I thought, to be very indifferent as to whether I went to New Orleans or not, and I had just decided to turn around and come back to New York, when the agent, who was making change for someone else, said: ‘I’m not positive, but I think there’s a train on such and such a road, and you may be able to get a berth on that. It leaves about this time, and if you hurry you may be able to catch it.’ He looked at his watch: ‘Yes, you’ve just about time to stand a chance; everything is late to-day, there are such crowds, and the snow and all.’ I thanked him, feeling like a dog over my ill-temper and rudeness to him, and decided to try. Anything was better than New York, Christmas-day. So I jumped into a carriage and told the driver to drive like the–the wind, and he did. When we arrived at the station the ticket agent could not tell me whether I could get a berth or not, the conductor had the diagram out at the train, but he thought there was not the slightest chance. I had gotten warmed up, however, by my friend’s civility at the other station, and I meant to go if there was any way to do it, so I grabbed up my bags and rushed out of the warm depot into the cold air again. I found the car and the conductor standing outside of it by the steps. The first thing that struck me was his appearance. Instead of being the dapper young naval-officerish-looking fellow I was accustomed to, he was a stout, elderly man, with bushy, gray hair and a heavy, grizzled mustache, who looked like an old field-marshal. He was surrounded by quite a number of people all crowding about him and asking him questions at once, some of whose questions he was answering slowly as he pored over his diagram, and others of which he seemed to be ignoring. Some were querulous, some good-natured, and all impatient, but he answered them all with imperturbable good humor. It was very cold, so I pushed my way into the crowd. As I did so I heard him say to someone: ‘You asked me if the lower berths were all taken, did you not?’ ‘Yes, five minutes ago!’ snapped the fellow, whom I had already heard swearing, on the edge of the circle. ‘Well, they are all taken, just as they were the first time I told you they were,’ he said, and opened a despatch given him by his porter, a tall, black, elderly negro with gray hair. I pushed my way in and asked him, in my most dulcet tone, if I could get an upper berth to New Orleans. I called him ‘Captain’, thinking him a pompous old fellow. He was just beginning to speak to someone else, but I caught him and he looked across the crowd and said ‘New Orleans!’ My heart sank at the tone, and he went on talking to some other man. ‘I told you that I would give you a lower berth, sir, I can give you one now, I have just got a message that the person who had “lower two” will not want it.’ ‘Hold on, then, I’ll take that lower,’ called the man who had spoken before, over the crowd, ‘I spoke for it first.’ ‘No you won’t,’ said the Captain, who went on writing. The man pushed his way in angrily, a big, self-assertive fellow; he was evidently smarting from his first repulse. ‘What’s that? I did, I say. I was here before that man got here, and asked you for a lower berth, and you said they were all taken.’ The Captain stopped and looked at him. ‘My dear sir, I know you did; but this gentleman has a lady along.’ But the fellow was angry. ‘I don’t care,’ he said, ‘I engaged the berth and I know my rights; I mean to have that lower berth, or I’ll see which is bigger, you or Mr. Pullman.’ Just then a lady, who had come out on the steps, spoke to the Captain about her seat in the car. He turned to her: ‘My dear madam, you are all right, just go in there and take your seat anywhere; when I come in I will fix everything. Go straight into that car and don’t come out in this cold air any more.’ The lady went back and the old fellow said, ‘Nick, go in there and seat that lady, if you have to turn every man out of his seat.’ Then, as the porter went in, he turned back to his irate friend. ‘Now, my dear sir, you don’t mean that: you’d be the first man to give up your berth; this gentleman has his sick wife with him and has been ordered to take her South immediately, and she’s going to have a lower berth if I turn every man in that car out, and if you were Mr. Pullman himself I’d tell you the same thing.’ The man fell back, baffled and humbled, and we all enjoyed it. Still, I was without a berth, so, with some misgiving, I began: ‘Captain?’ He turned to me. ‘Oh! you want to go to New Orleans?’ ‘Yes, to spend Christmas; any chance for me?’ He looked at his watch. ‘My dear young sir,’ he said, ‘go into the car and take a seat, and I’ll do the best I can with you.’ I went in, not at all sure that I should get a berth.