Atlantic Coast (U.S.) -- Description and travel -- Fiction
On the Fourth of July, at five o'clock in the morning, the porters
called the sleepers out of their berths at Wickford Junction. Modern
civilization offers no such test to the temper and to personal
appearance as this early preparation to meet the inspection of society
after a night in the stuffy and luxuriously upholstered tombs of a
sleeping-car. To get into them at night one must sacrifice dignity; to
get out of them in the morning, clad for the day, gives the proprietors
a hard rub. It is wonderful, however, considering the twisting and
scrambling in the berth and the miscellaneous and ludicrous presentation
of humanity in the washroom at the end of the car, how presentable
people make themselves in a short space of time. One realizes the debt
of the ordinary man to clothes, and how fortunate it is for society that
commonly people do not see each other in the morning until art has
done its best for them. To meet the public eye, cross and tousled
and disarranged, requires either indifference or courage. It is
disenchanting to some of our cherished ideals. Even the trig,
irreproachable commercial drummer actually looks banged-up, and nothing
of a man; but after a few moments, boot-blacked and paper-collared, he
comes out as fresh as a daisy, and all ready to drum.
Our travelers came out quite as well as could be expected, the artist
sleepy and a trifle disorganized, Mr. King in a sort of facetious
humor that is more dangerous than grumbling, Mr. De Long yawning and
stretching and declaring that he had not slept a wink, while Marion
alighted upon the platform unruffled in plumage, greeting the morning
like a bird. There were the usual early loafers at the station, hands
deep in pockets, ruminant, listlessly observant. No matter at what hour
of day or night a train may arrive or depart at a country station in
America, the loafers are so invariably there in waiting that they seem
to be a part of our railway system. There is something in the life and
movement that seems to satisfy all the desire for activity they have.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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