Transcribed from the 1883 James R. Osgood and Company edition byDavid Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
THE SLEEPING CAR—A FARCE
by William D. Howells
I.
SCENE: One side of a sleeping-car on the Boston and Albany Road. The curtains are drawn before most of the berths; from the hooks androds hang hats, bonnets, bags, bandboxes, umbrellas, and other travellinggear; on the floor are boots of both sexes, set out for THE PORTER toblack. THE PORTER is making up the beds in the upper and lowerberths adjoining the seats on which a young mother, slender and pretty,with a baby asleep on the seat beside her, and a stout old lady, sitconfronting each other—MRS. AGNES ROBERTS and her aunt MARY.
MRS. ROBERTS. Do you always take down your back hair, aunty?
AUNT MARY. No, never, child; at least not since I had sucha fright about it once, coming on from New York. It’s allwell enough to take down your back hair if it is yours; but ifit isn’t, your head’s the best place for it. Now,as I buy mine of Madame Pierrot—
MRS. ROBERTS. Don’t you wish she wouldn’tadvertise it as human hair? It sounds so pokerish—likehuman flesh, you know.
AUNT MARY. Why, she couldn’t call it inhuman hair,my dear.
MRS. ROBERTS (thoughtfully). No—just hair.
AUNT MARY. Then people might think it was for mattresses. But, as I was saying, I took it off that night, and tucked it safelyaway, as I supposed, in my pocket, and I slept sweetly till about midnight,when I happened to open my eyes, and saw something long and black crawloff my bed and slip under the berth. Such a shriek as Igave, my dear! “A snake! a snake! oh, a snake!” Andeverybody began talking at once, and some of the gentlemen swearing,and the porter came running with the poker to kill it; and all the whileit was that ridiculous switch of mine, that had worked out of my pocket. And glad enough I was to grab it up before anybody saw it, and say Imust have been dreaming.
MRS. ROBERTS. Why, aunty, how funny! How couldyou suppose a serpent could get on board a sleeping-car, of all placesin the world!
AUNT MARY. That was the perfect absurdity of it.
THE PORTER. Berths ready now, ladies.
MRS. ROBERTS (to THE PORTER, who walks away to the end of the car,and sits down near the door). Oh, thank you. Aunty, do youfeel nervous the least bit?
AUNT MARY. Nervous? No. Why?
MRS. ROBERTS. Well, I don’t know. I suppose I’vebeen worked up a little about meeting Willis, and wondering how he’lllook, and all. We can’t know each other, of course. It doesn’t stand to reason that if he’s been out there fortwelve years, ever since I was a child, though we’ve correspondedregularly—at least I have—that he could recognizeme; not at the first glance, you know. He’ll have a fullbeard; and then I’ve got married, and here’s the baby. Oh, no! he’ll never guess who it is in the world. Photographs really amount to nothing in such a case. I wish wewere at home, and it was all over. I wish he had written someparticulars, instead of telegraphing from Ogden, “Be with youon the 7 A.M., Wednesday.”
AUNT MARY. Californians always telegraph, my dear; they neverthink of writing. It isn’t expensive enough, and it doesn’tmake your blood run cold enough to get a letter, and so they send youone of those miserable yellow despatches whenever they can—thoseprinted in a long string, if possible, so that you’ll be sureto die before you get to the end of it. I suppose your brotherhas fallen into all those ways, and says “reckon” and “ornary”and “which the same,” just like one of Mr. Bret Harte’scharacters.
MRS. ROBERTS. But it isn’t exactly our not knowing eachother, aunt