But the lower-berth gentry never had any trouble of that kind. They would walk right up to the clerk's desk and register with an air of authority utterly impossible to a man who has been sleeping in a top berth and is looking dishevelled after dressing hastily. And they were never disappointed. While others were sitting around waiting for some one to check out so that they could get even an inside room opening on an airshaft, the travelling princes would be led to the elevators by obsequious bell-boys and personally conducted to palatial rooms with a southern exposure and a bath. Having a keen sense of my own carelessness and lack of foresight, I always humbly attributed my misfortunes to my own shiftlessness and mildly envied men who could have their minds so constantly fixed on sublunary affairs that they always got the best of everything. Finally I got what I thought was a possible way out of my troubles--at least as far as lower berths were concerned. Often I had been told that if I came around about an hour before the train started I might get a lower berth. Some one who had a reservation might fail to turn up and if I was on hand I might be the lucky one to get that lower berth. As I never put much faith in the suggestion I did not put it to the test, but when coming home from New York last week I had to come a couple of days sooner than I expected and arrived at the ticket office about an hour before the train started. The impossible happened. I got a lower berth. I don't know when I have felt so puffed up. At last I was on terms of equality with the aristocrats of the travelling public. Their "gallusses" might still make a finer showing than mine in the dressing-room, but as I shouldn't have to wait for the porter to bring me a ladder I could probably beat them to the washbowls in the morning. The country habit of early rising would stand me in good stead in a competition of this kind. All the way up to Poughkeepsie I felt the dignity of being a lower-berth passenger and kept aloof from the common herd of people who have to climb to upper berths. Being new in my class I did not feel quite up to interviewing other lower-berthers and discussing high matters of international relations with them. Once during the evening a Georgian from Atlanta asked me for information and my reply made him so sad that perhaps it was as well that I kept to myself. He asked me if there were any bars handy to the train when we should get to Niagara Falls, Canada. I was obliged to break the news to him that the nearest bar would probably be in Montreal. His distress was pitiful. Like almost every one else in the United States he thought that all Canada is wide open. And just think of it! He might have taken the trip to Montreal just as easily as the trip to Toronto. He was holidaying anyway. But I have wandered from my story.