Peck's Sunshine: Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun,; Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
General
Peck's Sunshine: Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun,; Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882
Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
American wit and humor
The run to Sparta was made, and Fred went to the baggage car, and
noticing the coffin and the mournful appearance of the boys, he told
them to brace up and have some style about them He said it was what we
had all to come to, sooner or later, and for his part a corpse or two,
more or less, in a car made no difference to him. He said he had rather
have a car load of dead people than go into an emigrant train when some
were eating cheese and others were taking off their shoes and feeding
infants.
He sat down in a chair and was counting over his tickets, and wondering
where all the passes come from, when the Legislature is not in session.
The train was just going through the tunnel near Greenfield, and Fred
says.
“Boys, we are now in the bowels of the earth, way down deeper than a
grave. Whew! how close it smells.”
Just then the baggagemaster had taken a dipper of water from the barrel,
and was drinking it, when a sepulchral voice, that seemed to come from
the coffin, said:
“Dammit, let me out!”
The baggage man had his mouth fall of water, and when he heard the voice
from the tombs, he squirted the water clear across the car, onto the
express messenger, turned pale, and leaned against a trunk.
Fred Cornes heard the noise, and, chucking the tickets into his pocket
and grabbing his lantern, he said, as he looked at the coffin:
“Who said that! Now, no ventriloquism on me, boys. I'm an old traveler,
and don't you fool with me.”
The baggage man had by this time got his breath, and he swore upon his
sacred honor that the corpse in there was alive, and asked to be let
out.
Fred went out of the car to register at Greenfield, and the express
messenger opened the door to put out some egg cases, and the baggage man
pulled out a trunk. He was so weak he couldn't lift it. They were all as
pale as a whitewashed fence.
After the train left Greenfield they all gathered in the car and
listened at a respectful distance from the coffin. All was as still as
a car can be that is running twenty-five miles an hour. They gathered
a little nearer, but no noise, when Cornes said they were all off their
base, and had better soak their heads.
“You fellows are overworked, and are nervous, The company ought to give
you a furlough, and pay your expenses to the sea shore.”
Just then there was a rustling as if somebody had rolled over in bed and
a voice said, as plainly as possible:
“O, how I suffer!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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