Miss Catherine Bates, in her “Year in the Great Republic,” narrates the case of a man who was nearly suffocated by the fact that a slight collision jarred the lid of the top berth in which he was sleeping and snapped it to!  This story may be true; but in the only top berths which I know the occupant lies upon the lid, which, to close, would have to spring upwards against his weight!

A third nuisance, or combination of benefit and nuisance, or benefit with a very strong dash of avoidable nuisance, is the train boy.  This young gentleman, whose age varies from fifteen to fifty, though usually nearer the former than the latter, is one of the most conspicuous of the embryo forms of the great American speculator or merchant.  He occupies with his stock in trade a corner in the baggage car or end carriage of the train, and makes periodical rounds throughout the cars, offering his wares for sale.  These are of the most various description, ranging from the daily papers and current periodicals through detective stories and tales of the Wild West, to chewing-gum, pencils, candy, bananas, skull-caps, fans, tobacco, and cigars.  His pleasing way is to perambulate the cars, leaving samples of his wares on all the seats and afterwards calling for orders.  He does this with supreme indifference to the occupation of the passenger.  Thus, you settle yourself comfortably for a nap, and are just succumbing to the drowsy god, when you feel yourself “taken in the abdomen,” not (fortunately) by “a chunk of old red sandstone,” but by the latest number of the Illustrated American or Scribner’s Monthly.  The rounds are so frequent that the door of the car never seems to cease banging or the cold draughts to cease blowing in on your bald head.  Mr. Phil Robinson makes the very sensible suggestion that the train boy should have a little printed list of his wares which he could distribute throughout the train, whereupon the traveller could send for him when wanted.  Another suggestion that I venture to present to this independent young trader is that he should provide himself with copies of the novels treating of the districts which the railway traverses.  Thus, when I tried to procure from him “Ramona” in California, or “The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains” in Tennessee, or “The Hoosier Schoolmaster” in Ohio, or “The Grandissimes” near New Orleans, the nearest he could come to my modest demand was “The Kreutzer Sonata” or the last effort of Miss Laura Jean Libbey, a popular American novelist, who describes in glowing colours how two aristocratic Englishmen, fighting a duel near London somewhere in the seventies, were interrupted by the heroine, who drove between them in a hansom and pair and received the shots in its panels!  Out West, too, he could probably put more money in his pocket if he were disposed to put his pride there too.  One pert youth in Arizona preferred to lose my order for cigars rather than bring the box to me for selection; he said “he’d be darned if he’d sling boxes around for me; I could come and choose for myself.”  However, when criticism has been exhausted it is an undeniable fact that the American Pullman cars are more comfortable and considerably cheaper than the so-called compartiments de luxe of European railways.