me of myself,
and hunted for the porter to hand him twenty-five cents. But he had
gone, and the train was ready. I had to save the money and run.

From thence on I had no good sleep. I huddled up in the narrow seats
with no room to stretch or lie down. Once I tried to take up the
cushions and put them crossways, but I found them fixed, and the
conductor grinned.

"You can't do it now; they're fixed different," he said.

So I grunted, and was twisted and racked and contorted. In the morning I
knew well that I was no longer twenty-five. Twelve years ago it wouldn't
have mattered, I could have hung it out on a fence rail, but when one
nears forty one tries a bit after ordinary comforts, and pays for such a
racket in aches and pains, and a temper with a wire edge on it. But I
chummed in after Ogden with a young school ma'am from Wisconsin who was
going out to Los Angeles, and we had quite a good time. She assured me I
must be lying when I said I was an Englishman, because I did not drop my
H's. All the Englishmen she ever met had apparently known as much about
the aspirate as the later Greeks did of the Digamma. This cheered me up
greatly, and we were firm friends. In fact, I woke up in the Sierras
and found her fast asleep with her head on my shoulder. It was an odd
picture that swaying car at midnight in the lofty hills. Most of the
passengers were sleeping uneasily in constrained attitudes, but some sat
at the open windows staring at the moon-lit mountains and forests. The
dull oil lights in the car were dim, so dim that I could see white
sleeping faces hanging over the seats disconnected from any discoverable
body. Some looked like death masks, and then next to them would be the
elevated feet of some far-stretching person who had tried all ways for
ease. It was a blessing to come to the divide and run down into the
daylight and the plains. Yet even there, there was something ghastly
with us. At Reno a young fellow, trying to beat his way, had jumped for
the brake-beam under our car and been cut to pieces. He died silently,
and few knew it. I was glad to get to San Francisco. I went to a
third-class hotel on Ellis Street, and had a bath, which I most sorely
needed. I went out to inspect the city.

It looked the same as when I knew it, and yet it was altered. The
gigantic architectural horrors of New York and Chicago had leapt to the
Pacific, and here and there ten or twelve-storied buildings thrust their
monotonous u