leeping-car blankets were
unlike other blankets; why they were like squares cut out of cold
buckwheat cakes, and why they clung to you when you turned over, and
lay heavy on you without warmth; why the curtains before you could not
have been made opaque, without being so thick and suffocating; why it
would not be as well to sit up all night half asleep in an ordinary
passenger-car as to lie awake all night in a Pullman. But the snoring
of my fellow-passengers answered this question in the negative.

With the recollection of last night's dinner weighing on me as heavily
and coldly as the blankets, I began wondering why, over the whole
extent of the continent, there was no local dish; why the bill of fare
at restaurant and hotel was invariably only a weak reflex of the
metropolitan hostelries; why the entrees were always the same, only
more or less badly cooked; why the traveling American always was
supposed to demand turkey and cold cranberry sauce; why the pretty
waiter-girl apparently shuffled your plates behind your back, and then
dealt them over your shoulder in a semicircle, as if they were a hand
at cards, and not always a good one? Why, having done this, she
instantly retired to the nearest wall, and gazed at you scornfully, as
one who would say, "Fair sir, though lowly, I am proud; if thou dost
imagine that I would permit undue familiarity of speech, beware!" And
then I began to think of and dread the coming breakfast; to wonder why
the ham was always cut half an inch thick, and why the fried egg always
resembled a glass eye that visibly winked at you with diabolical
dyspeptic suggestions; to wonder if the buckwheat cakes, the eating of
which requires a certain degree of artistic preparation and
deliberation, would be brought in as usual one minute before the train
started. And then I had a vivid recollection of a fellow-passenger who,
at a certain breakfast station in Illinois, frantically enwrapped his
portion of this national pastry in his red bandana handkerchief, took
it into the smoking-car, and quietly devoured it en route.

Lying broad awake, I could not help making some observations which I
think are not noticed by the day traveler. First, that the speed of a
train is not equal or continuous. That at certain times the engine
apparently starts up, and says to the baggage train behind it, "Come,
come, this won't do! Why, it's nearly half-past two; how in h-ll shall
we get through? Don't you talk to