other man's
arm. The light was dim, and all I could make out was arms and legs and
bodies inextricably confused. Never was there such a tangle of
humanity. They were all lying in the straw, and over, and under, and
around one another. Eighty-four husky hoboes take up a lot of room
when they are stretched out. The men I stepped on were resentful.
Their bodies heaved under me like the waves of the sea, and imparted
an involuntary forward movement to me. I could not find any straw to
step upon, so I stepped upon more men. The resentment increased, so
did my forward movement. I lost my footing and sat down with sharp
abruptness. Unfortunately, it was on a man's head. The next moment he
had risen on his hands and knees in wrath, and I was flying through
the air. What goes up must come down, and I came down on another man's
head.

What happened after that is very vague in my memory. It was like going
through a threshing-machine. I was bandied about from one end of the
car to the other. Those eighty-four hoboes winnowed me out till what
little was left of me, by some miracle, found a bit of straw to rest
upon. I was initiated, and into a jolly crowd. All the rest of that
day we rode through the blizzard, and to while the time away it was
decided that each man was to tell a story. It was stipulated that
each story must be a good one, and, furthermore, that it must be a
story no one had ever heard before. The penalty for failure was the
threshing-machine. Nobody failed. And I want to say right here that
never in my life have I sat at so marvellous a story-telling debauch.
Here were eighty-four men from all the world--I made eighty-five; and
each man told a masterpiece. It had to be, for it was either
masterpiece or threshing-machine.

Late in the afternoon we arrived in Cheyenne. The blizzard was at its
height, and though the last meal of all of us had been breakfast, no
man cared to throw his feet for supper. All night we rolled on through
the storm, and next day found us down on the sweet plains of Nebraska
and still rolling. We were out of the storm and the mountains. The
blessed sun was shining over a smiling land, and we had eaten nothing
for twenty-four hours. We found out that the freight would arrive
about noon at a town, if I remember right, that was called Grand
Island.

We took up a collection and sent a telegram to the authorities of that
town. The text of the message was that eighty-five healthy, hungry
hoboes