the stepladder and there I was, sitting on the perilous
edge of my pantry shelf with nothing to comfort me save the exhaust of
a professional snorer.

After about five minutes devoted to a parade of all my sins I began to
try to extract my personality from my coat, but when I pushed my arm up
in the air to get the sleeve loose my knuckles struck the hard-wood
finish and I fell backward on the cast-iron pillow, breathing hoarsely
like a busy jack rabbit.

I waited about ten minutes while my brain was bobbing back and forth
with the excitement of running fifty miles an hour over a careless part
of the country, and then I cautiously tried to approach my shoe laces.

Say! if you're a man and you weigh in the neighborhood of 225 pounds,
most of which is in the region of the equator, you will appreciate what
it means to lie on your back in an upper berth and try to get your
shoes off.

And this goes double for the man who weighs more than 225 pounds.

Every time I reached for my feet to get my shoes off I bumped my head
off, and the more I bumped my head off the less I got my shoes off, and
the less I got my shoes off the more I seemed to bump my head off, so I
decided that in order to keep my head on I had better keep my shoes on
also.

Then I tried to divorce my suspenders from my shoulders, but just as I
got the suspenders half way over my head I struck my crazy bone on the
rafters, and there I was, suspendered between Heaven and earth, but
praying with all my heart for a bottle of arnica.

_Then_ I decided to sleep as nature made me, with all my clothes on,
including my rubbers.

So I stretched out, but just then the train struck a curve and I went
up in the air till the ceiling hit me, and then I bounced over to the
edge of the precipice and hung there, trembling on the verge.

Below me all was dark and gloomy, and only by the hoarse groans of the
snorers could I tell that the Pullman Company was still making money.

Luck was with me, however, for just then the train struck an in-shoot
curve which pushed me to the wall, and I bumped my head so completely
that I fell asleep.

When I woke up a small package of daylight was peeping into the car, so
I decided to descend from my cupboard shelf at once.

I peeped out through the aluminum curtains, but there was no sign of
the colored porter and the step-ladder was invisible to the naked eye.

The car was peaceful now with the exception of a gent in lower No. 4,