Talk of tips to Lemuel!  His face lengthens.  You may not believe it, white man, but Lemuel made fifty-three cents in tips on the last trip from New York to Chicago.  You can understand the man who gave him the Columbian antique; but Lemuel believes there can be no future too warm for that skinny man who gave him the three pennies!  He thinks the gentleman might at least have come across with a Subway ticket.  It is all legal tender to him.

All that saves this porter’s bacon is the fact that he is in charge of the car—­for some three hundred miles of its eastbound run he is acting as sleeping-car conductor, for which consolidated job he draws down a proportionate share of forty-two dollars a month.  This is a small sop, however, to Lemuel.  He turns and tells you how, on the last trip, he came all the way from St. Louis to New York—­two nights on the road—­without ever a “make-down,” as he calls preparing a berth.  No wonder then that he has difficulty in making fifty dollars a month, with his miserable tips on the lean run.

Nor is that all.  Though Lemuel is permitted three hours’ sleep—­on the bunk in the washroom on the long runs—­from midnight to three o’clock in the morning, there may come other times when his head begins to nod.  And those are sure to be the times when some lynx-eyed inspector comes slipping aboard.  Biff!  Bang!  Pullman discipline is strict.  Something has happened to Lemuel’s pay envelope, and his coffee-colored wife in West Twenty-ninth Street will not be able to get those gray spats until they are clean gone out of style.

What can be done for Lemuel?  He must bide his time and constantly make himself a better servant—­a better porter, if you please.  It will not go unnoticed.  The Pullman system has a method for noticing those very things—­inconsequential in themselves but all going to raise the standard of its service.

Then some fine day something will happen.  A big sleeping-car autocrat, in the smugness and false security of a fat run, is going to err.  He is going to step on the feet of some important citizen—­perhaps a railroad director—­and the important citizen is going to make a fuss.  After which Lemuel, hard-schooled in adversity, in faithfulness and in courtesy, will be asked in the passing of a night to change places with the old autocrat.

And the old autocrat, riding in the poverty of a lean run, will have plenty of opportunity to count the telegraph poles and reflect on the mutability of men and things.  The Pullman Company denies that this is part of its system; but it does happen—­time and time and time again.

George, or Lemuel, or Alexander—­whatever the name may be—­has no easy job.  If you do not believe that, go upstairs some hot summer night to the rear bedroom—­that little room under the blazing tin roof which you reserve for your relatives—­and make up the bed fifteen or twenty times, carefully unmaking it between times and placing the clothes away in a regular position.  Let your family nag at you and criticize you during each moment of the job—­while somebody plays an obbligato on the electric bell and places shoes and leather grips underneath your feet.  Imagine the house is bumping and rocking—­and keep a smiling face and a courteous tongue throughout all of it!