s one thing about sleeping cars that should be changed, and that
is the number of the berth should be on the curtain, so when a man gets
up in the night to go out to the back end of the car and look out into
the night to see if the stars are shining, and he gets through seeing
if the stars are shining, and goes back, he will not get into the wrong
berth.

Since the other night we have not wondered that on a similar occasion,
at the dead hour of night, as it is reported, the truly good Mr.
Beecher, who left his berth to see the porter, and ask him about how
long it would be before they got there, returned to what he supposed
was his own berth, and sat down on the side of it to remove his
trouserloons, and by a scream was notified that he was in the wrong
pew. We attach no blame to Mr. Beecher, and would defend him to the last
breath, because to a man whose mind is occupied with great thoughts, the
berths all look alike. Neither do we blame Miss Anthony for screaming.
She could not know in the imperfect light that was vouchsafed her in a
sleeping car, that it was a mistake. She had no time to argue; it was
a case where immediate decision was necessary, and she did right to
scream--she could not do otherwise. But when vile men tell us, as they
draw down their eyelids and wink, that it was "a mistake the way the
woman kept tavern in Michigan," they do an injustice to a noble preacher
who has been lied about, and who has better judgment than to do so
knowingly.

So we say that anybody is liable to err; but if anybody had told us,
when that woman from Pere Marquette, with a hare lip, and a foot like
a fiddle box, got into the berth next to ours, that in the dead hour of
night we should be sitting down on the selvage of her berth, we should
have killed him.

We are more than ever struck by the old adage that the ways of
Providence are inscrutable, and past finding the right berth. We had
gone out to the back part of the car, and stood in our stocking feet on
the cold zinc floor for a couple or three minutes, looking out upon
the beautiful Michigan landscape and waterscape, as the train passed
Michigan City, and had asked the porter if there was any bar on the
train, and had returned up the aisle to find our berth.

Pulling aside the curtains we sat down, and were about to throw our hind
leg up into the sheets, when a cold, hard hand, calloused like a horn
spoon, grabbed hold of the small of our back, and two piercing eyes