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Ebook has 972 lines and 45677 words, and 20 pages

A NIGHT OUT

Thoreau once spent the whole livelong night in the hush of the wilderness; sitting alone, listening to its sounds--the fall of a nut, the hoot of a distant owl, the ceaseless song of the frogs.

This night of mine was spent in the open; where men came and went and where the rush of many feet, and the babel of countless voices could be heard even in its stillest watches.

In my wanderings up and down the land, speaking first in one city and then in another, often with long distances between, I have had the good fortune to enjoy many such nights. Some of them are filled with the most delightful memories of my life.

The following telegram was handed me as I left the stage of the Opera House in Marshall, Mich., some months ago:

"Can you speak in Cleveland to-morrow afternoon at 2.30? Important.--Answer."

I looked at my watch. It was half past ten o'clock. Cleveland was two hundred miles away, and the Night Express to Toledo and the East, due in an hour, did not stop at Marshall.

I jumped into a hack, sprang out at the hotel entrance and corralled the clerk as he was leaving for the night. For some minutes we pored over a railway guide. This was the result:

Leave Marshall at 1.40 A.M., make a short run up the road to Battle Creek, stay there until half past three, then back again through Marshall without stopping, to Jackson--lie over another hour and so on to Adrian and Toledo for breakfast, arriving at Cleveland at 11.30 the next morning. An all-night trip, of course, with changes so frequent as to preclude the possibility of sleep, but a perfectly feasible one if the trains made reasonable time and connections.

This despatch went over the wires in reply:

"Yes, weather permitting."

To go upstairs and to bed and to be called in two hours wouldn't pay for the trouble of undressing; better pick out the warm side of the stove, take two chairs and a paper two days old and kill time until one o'clock. I killed it alone--everybody having gone to sleep but the night porter, who was to telephone for the hack and assist with my luggage.

It was a silent night. One of those white, cold, silent nights when everything seems frozen--the people as well as the ground; no wind, no sounds from barking dogs or tread of hoof or rumble of wheels. A light snow was falling--an unnoticed snow, for the porter and I were the only people awake; at eleven o'clock a few whirling flakes; at twelve o'clock an inch deep, packed fine as salt, and as hard; at one o'clock three inches deep, smooth as a sheet and as unbroken; no furrow of wheels or slur of footstep. The people might have been in their graves and the snow their winding-shroud.

"Hack's ready, sir." This from the porter, rubbing his eyes and stumbling along with my luggage.

Into the hack again--same hack; it had been driven under the shed, making a night of it, too--my trunk with a red band outside with the driver, my fur overcoat and grip inside with me.

There is nothing princely, now, about this coat; you wouldn't be specially proud of it if you could see it--just a plain fur overcoat--an old friend really--and still is. On cold nights I put it next to the frozen side of the car when I am lying in my berth. Often it covers my bed when the thermometer has dropped to zero and below, and I am sleeping with my window up. It has had experiences, too, this fur coat; a boy went home in it once with a broken leg, and his little sister rode with her arm around him, and once--but this isn't the place to tell about it.

From the hotel to the station the spools of the hack paid out two wabbly parallel threads, stringing them around corners and into narrow streets and out again, so that the team could find its way back, perhaps.

Another porter now met me--not sleepy this time, but very much awake; a big fellow in a jumper, with a number on his cap, who caught the red-banded trunk by the handle and "yanked" it on to the platform, shouting out in the same breath, "Cleveland via Battle Creek--no extras!"

Then came the shriek of the incoming train--a local bound for Battle Creek and beyond. Two cars on this train, a passenger and a smoker. I lugged the fur overcoat and grip up the snow-clogged steps and entered the smoker. No Pullman on these locals, and, of course, no porter, and travellers, therefore, did their own lifting and lugging.

The view down the perspective of this smoker was like a view across a battle-field, the long slanting lines of smoke telling of the carnage. Bodies were lying in every conceivable position, with legs and arms thrust up as if the victims had died in agony; some face down; others with gaping mouths and heads hooked across the seats. These heads and arms and legs made the passage of the aisle difficult. One--a leg--got tangled in my overcoat, and the head belonging to it said with a groan:

But I did not stop. I kept on my way to the passenger coach. It was not my fault that no Pullman with a porter attached was run on this local.

There was no smoke in this coach. Neither was there any heat. There was nothing that could cause it. Something had happened, perhaps to the coupling of the steam hose so that it wouldn't couple; or the bottom was out of the hollow mockery called a heater; or the coal had been held up. Whatever the cause, a freight shed was a palm garden beside it. Nor had it any signs of a battle-field. It looked more like a ward in a hospital with most of the beds empty. Only one or two were occupied; one by a baby and another by its mother--the woman on one seat, her hand across the body of the child, and both fast asleep, one little bare foot peeping out from beneath the shawl that covered the child, like a pink flower a-bloom in a desert.

I can always get along in a cold car. It is a hot one that incites me to murder the porter or the brakeman. I took off the coat I was wearing and laid it flat on a seat. Then came a layer of myself with the grip for a pillow, and then a top crust of my old friend. They might have knocked out the end of the car now and I should have been comfortable. Not to sleep--forty minutes wouldn't be of the slightest service to a night watchman, let alone an all-night traveller--but so as to be out of the way of porterless-passengers lugging grips.

The weather now took a hand in the game. The cold grew more intense, creeping stealthily along, blowing its frosty breath on the windows; so dense on some panes that the lights of the stations no longer shone clear, but were blurred, like lamps in a fog. The incoming passengers felt it and stamped their feet, shedding the snow from their boots. Now and then some traveller, colder than his fellow, stopped at the fraudulent heater to warm his fingers before finding a seat, and, strange to say, passed on satisfied--due to his heated imagination, no doubt.

The blanket of white was now six inches thick, and increasing every minute. The wind was still asleep.

"Guess we're in for it," said the conductor to a ticket stuck in the hat of a man seated in front. "I hear No. 6 is stalled chuck-a-block this side of Schoolcraft. We'll make Battle Creek anyway, and as much furder as we can get, but there ain't no tellin' where we'll bring up."

I thrust my ticket hand through the crust of my overcoat and the steel nippers perforated the bit of cardboard with a click. I was undisturbed. Battle Creek was where I was to get off; what became of the train after that was no affair of mine.

Only one thing worried me as I lay curled up like a cocoon. Was there a hotel at Battle Creek within reasonable distance , with a warm side to its stove and two more chairs in which I could pass the time of my stay, or would there be only the railroad station--and if the last, what sort of a railroad station?--one of those bare, varnished, steam-heated affairs with a weighing machine in one corner and a slot machine in the other? or a less modern chamber of horrors with the seats divided by iron arms--instruments of torture for tired, sleepy men which must have been devised in the Middle Ages?

The wind now awoke with a howl, kicked off its counterpane and started out on a career of its own. Ventilators began to rattle; incoming passengers entered with hands on their hats; outgoing passengers had theirs whipped from their heads before they touched the platforms of the stations. The conductor as he passed shook his head ominously:

"Goin' to be a ring-tailed roarer," he said to a man in the aisle whose face was tied up in a shawl with the ends knotted on top of his cap, like a boy with the toothache. "Cold enough to freeze the rivets in the b'iler. Be wuss by daylight."

"Will we make Battle Creek?" I asked, lifting my head from the grip.

"Yes; be there in two minutes. He's blowin' for her now."

Before the brakeman had tightened his clutch on his brake I was on my feet, had shifted overcoats, and was leaning against the fraudulent heater ready to face the storm.

It would have been a far-seeing eye that could have discovered a hotel. All I saw as I dropped to the snow-covered platform was a row of gas jets, a lone figure pushing a truck piled up with luggage, one arm across his face to shield it from the cutting snow, and above me the gray mass of the station, its roof lost in the gloom of the wintry night. Then an unencumbered passenger, more active than I, passed me up the wind-swept platform, pushed open a door, and he and I stepped into-- What did I step into? Well, it would be impossible for you to imagine, and so I will tell you in a new paragraph.

I gravitated instinctively toward the fire, threw my overcoat and grip on the lounge and looked about me. The one passenger besides myself tarried long enough at the ticket office to speak to the clerk, and then passed on through the other door. He lived here, perhaps, or preferred the hotel--wherever that was--to the comforts of the station.

The ticket-clerk locked his office, looked over to where I stood with my back to the blazing fire, my eyes roving around the room, and called out:

"I'm going home now. Hotel's only three blocks away."

"When is the down train due?" I asked.

"Three-thirty."

"Will it be on time?"

"Never stole it. Search me! May be an hour late; may be two," he added with a laugh.

"I'll stay here, if you don't mind."

"Course--glad to have you. You'll want more wood, though.... John!"--this to the man who had been pushing the truck--"bring in some more wood; man's going to stay here for No. 8. Good-night." And he shut the door and went out into the storm, his coat-sleeve across his face.

John appeared and dropped an armful of clean split silver-backed birch logs in a heap on the hearth, remarking as he bobbed his head good-night, "Guess you won't freeze," and left by the same exit as the clerk, a breath of the North Pole being puffed into the cosey room as he opened and shut the door.

There are times when to me it is a delight to be left alone. I invariably experience it when I am sketching. I often have this feeling, too, when my study door is shut and I am alone with my work and books. I had it in an increased degree this night, with the snow drifting outside, the wind fingering around the windows seeking for an entrance, and the whole world sound asleep except myself. It seemed good to be alone in the white stillness. What difference did the time of night make, or the place, or the storm, or the morrow and what it might bring, so long as I could repeat in a measure the comforts and privacy of my own dear den at home?

I began to put my house in order. The table with the pitcher and goblets was drawn up by the side of the sofa; two easy chairs moved into position, one for my feet and one for my back, where the overhanging electric light would fall conveniently, and another log thrown on the fire, sending the crisp blazing sparks upward. My fur overcoat was next hung over the chair with the fur side out, the grip opened, and the several comforts one always carries were fished out and laid beside the ice-pitcher--my flask of Private Stock, a collar-box full of cigars, some books and a bundle of proof with a special delivery stamp--proofs that should have been revised and mailed two days before. These last were placed within reach of my hand.

Before I had corrected my first galley my ear caught the sound of stamping feet outside. Some early train-hand, perhaps, or porter, or some passenger who had misread the schedule; for nothing up or down was to pass the station except, perhaps, a belated freight. Then the door was burst open, and a voice as crisp as the gust of wind that ushered it in called out:

"Well, begorra! ye look as snug as a bug in a rug. What d'ye think of this for a night?"

He was approaching the fire now, shaking the snow from his uniform and beating his hands together as he walked.

I have a language adapted to policemen and their kind, and I invariably use it when occasion offers. Strange to say, my delight at being alone had now lost its edge.

"Corker, isn't it?" I answered. "Draw up a chair and make yourself comfortable."

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