The train was crowded somewhat, and so I sat in a seat with a woman who
got aboard at Minkin's Siding. I noticed as we pulled out of Minkin's
Siding, that this woman raised the window so that she could bid adieu to a
man in a dyed moustache. I do not know whether he was her dolce far
niente, or her grandson by her second husband. I know that if he had been
a relative of mine, however, I would have cheerfully concealed the fact.
[Illustration: SHE SOBBED SEVERAL MORE TIMES.]
She waved a little 2x6 handkerchief out of the window, said “good-bye,”
allowed a fresh zephyr from Cape Sabine to come in and play a xylophone
interlude on my spinal column, and then burst into a paroxysm of damp, hot
tears.
I had to go into another car for a moment, and when I returned a pugilist
from Chicago had my seat. When I travel I am uniformly courteous,
especially to pugilists. A pugilist who has started out as an obscure boy
with no money, no friends, and no one to practice on, except his wife or
his mother, with no capital aside from his bare hands; a man who has had
to fight his way through life, as it were, and yet who has come out of
obscurity and attracted the attention of the authorities, and won the good
will of those with whom he came in contact, will always find me cordial
and pacific. So I allowed this self-made man with the broad, high,
intellectual shoulder blades, to sit in my seat with his feet on my new
and expensive traveling bag, while I sat with the tear-bedewed memento
from Minkin's Siding.
She sobbed several more times, then hove a sigh that rattled the windows
in the car, and sat up. I asked her if I might sit by her side for a few
miles and share her great sorrow. She looked at me askance. I did not
resent it. She allowed me to take the seat, and I looked at a paper for a
few moments so that she could look me over through the corners of her
eyes. I also scrutinized her lineaments some.
She was dressed up considerably, and, when a woman dresses up to ride in a
railway train, she advertises the fact that her intellect is beginning to
totter on its throne. People who have more than one suit of clothes should
not pick out the fine raiment for traveling purposes. This person was not
handsomely dressed, but she had the kind of clothes that look as though
they had tried to present the appearance of affluence and had failed to do
so.
This leads me to say, in all seriousness, that there is nothing so sad as
the sight of a man or woman who would scorn to tell a wrong story, but who
will persist in wearing bogus clothes and bogus jewelry that wouldn't fool
anybody.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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