I had noticed a peculiar Aeolian harp-like cry that ran through the whole train as we settled to rest at last after a long run--an almost sigh of infinite relief, a musical sigh that began in C and ran gradually up to F natural, which I think most observant travelers have noticed day and night. No railway official has ever given me a satisfactory explanation of it. As the car, in a rapid run, is always slightly projected forward of its trucks, a practical friend once suggested to me that it was the gradual settling back of the car body to a state of inertia, which, of course, every poetical traveler would reject. Four o'clock the sound of boot-blacking by the porter faintly apparent from the toilet-room. Why not talk to him? But, fortunately, I remembered that any attempt at extended conversation with conductor or porter was always resented by them as implied disloyalty to the company they represented. I recalled that once I had endeavored to impress upon a conductor the absolute folly of a midnight inspection of tickets, and had been treated by him as an escaped lunatic. No, there was no relief from this suffocating and insupportable loneliness to be gained then. I raised the window-blind and looked out. We were passing a farm-house. A light, evidently the lantern of a farm-hand, was swung beside a barn. Yes, the faintest tinge of rose in the far horizon. Morning, surely, at last. We had stopped at a station. Two men had got into the car, and had taken seats in the one vacant section, yawning occasionally and conversing in a languid, perfunctory sort of way. They sat opposite each other, occasionally looking out of the window, but always giving the strong impression that they were tired of each other's company. As I looked out of my curtains at them, the One Man said, with a feebly concealed yawn:-- "Yes, well, I reckon he was at one time as poplar an ondertaker ez I knew." The Other Man (inventing a question rather than giving an answer, out of some languid, social impulse): "But was he--this yer ondertaker--a Christian--hed he jined the church?" The One Man (reflectively): "Well, I don't know ez you might call him a purfessin' Christian; but he hed--yes, he hed conviction. I think Dr. Wylie hed him under conviction. Et least that was the way I got it from HIM." A long, dreary pause. The Other Man (feeling it was incumbent upon him to say something): "But why was he poplar ez an ondertaker?" The One Man (lazily): "Well, he was kinder poplar with widders and widderers--sorter soothen 'em a kinder, keerless way; slung 'em suthin' here and there, sometimes outer the Book, sometimes outer hisself, ez a man of experience as hed hed sorror. Hed, they say (VERY CAUTIOUSLY), lost three wives hisself, and five children by this yer new disease--dipthery--out in Wisconsin. I don't know the facts, but that's what's got round." The Other Man: "But how did he lose his poplarity?"