THE EMIGRANT TRAIN
All this while I had been travelling by mixed trains, where I might
meet with Dutch widows and little German gentry fresh from table.
I had been but a latent emigrant; now I was to be branded once
more, and put apart with my fellows. It was about two in the
afternoon of Friday that I found myself in front of the Emigrant
House, with more than a hundred others, to be sorted and boxed for
the journey. A white-haired official, with a stick under one arm,
and a list in the other hand, stood apart in front of us, and
called name after name in the tone of a command. At each name you
would see a family gather up its brats and bundles and run for the
hindmost of the three cars that stood awaiting us, and I soon
concluded that this was to be set apart for the women and children.
The second or central car, it turned out, was devoted to men
travelling alone, and the third to the Chinese. The official was
easily moved to anger at the least delay; but the emigrants were
both quick at answering their names, and speedy in getting
themselves and their effects on board.
The families once housed, we men carried the second car without
ceremony by simultaneous assault. I suppose the reader has some
notion of an American railroad-car, that long, narrow wooden box,
like a flat-roofed Noah's ark, with a stove and a convenience, one
at either end, a passage down the middle, and transverse benches
upon either hand. Those destined for emigrants on the Union
Pacific are only remarkable for their extreme plainness, nothing
but wood entering in any part into their constitution, and for the
usual inefficacy of the lamps, which often went out and shed but a
dying glimmer even while they burned. The benches are too short
for anything but a young child. Where there is scarce elbow-room
for two to sit, there will not be space enough for one to lie.
Hence the company, or rather, as it appears from certain bills
about the Transfer Station, the company's servants, have conceived
a plan for the better accommodation of travellers. They prevail on
every two to chum together. To each of the chums they sell a board
and three square cushions stuffed with straw, and covered with thin
cotton. The benches can be made to face each other in pairs, for
the backs are reversible. On the approach of night the boards are
laid from bench to bench, making a couch wide enough for two, and
long enough for a man of the middle height; and the chums lie down
side by side upon the cushions with the head to the conductor's van
and the feet to the engine. When the train is full, of course this
plan is impossible, for there must not be more than one to every
bench, neither can it be carried out unless the chums agree. It
was to bring about this last condition that our white-haired
official now bestirred himself. He made a most active master of
ceremonies, introducing likely couples, and even guaranteeing the
amiability and honesty of each. The greater the number of happy
couples the better for his pocket, for it was he who sold the raw
material of the beds. His price for one board and three straw
cushions began with two dollars and a half; but before the train
left, and, I am sorry to say, long after I had purchased mine, it
had fallen to one dollar and a half.
The match-maker had a difficulty with me; perhaps, like some
ladies, I showed myself too eager for union at any price; but
certainly the first who was picked out to be my bedfellow, declined
the honour without thanks. He was an old, heavy, slow-spoken man,
I think from Yankeeland, looked me all over with great timidity,
and then began to excuse himself in broken phrases. He didn't know
the young man, he said. The young man might be very honest, but
how was he to know that? There was another young man whom he had
met already in the train; he guessed he was honest, and would
prefer to chum with him upon the whole. All this without any sort
of excuse, as though I had been inanimate or absent. I began to
tremble lest every one should refuse my company, and I be left
rejected. But the next in turn was a tall, strapping, long-limbed,
small-headed, curly-haired Pennsylvania Dutchman, with a soldierly
smartness in his manner. To be exact, he had acquired it in the
navy. But that was all one; he had at least been trained to
desperate resolves, so he accepted the match, and the white-haired
swindler pronounced the connubial benediction, and pocketed his
fees.
The rest of the afternoon was spent in making up the train. I am
afraid to say how many baggage-waggons followed the engine,
certainly a score; then came the Chinese, then we, then the
families, and the rear was brought up by the conductor in what, if
I have it rightly, is called his caboose. The class to which I
belonged was of course far the largest, and we ran over, so to
speak, to both sides; so that there were some Caucasians among the
Chinamen, and some bachelors among the families. But our own car
was pure from admixture, save for one little boy of eight or nine
who had the whooping-cough. At last, about six, the long train
crawled out of the Transfer Station and across the wide Missouri
river to Omaha, westward bound.
It was a troubled uncomfortable evening in the cars. There was
thunder in the air, which helped to keep us restless. A man played
many airs upon the cornet, and none of them were much attended to,
until he came to "Home, sweet home." It was truly strange to note
how the talk ceased at that, and the faces began to lengthen. I
have no idea whether musically this air is to be considered good or
bad; but it belongs to that class of art which may be best
described as a brutal assault upon the feelings. Pathos must be
relieved by dignity of treatment. If you wallow naked in the
pathetic, like the author of "Home, sweet home," you make your
hearers weep in an unmanly fashion; and even while yet they are
moved, they despise themselves and hate the occasion of their
weakness. It did not come to tears that night, for the experiment
was interrupted. An elderly, hard-looking man, with a goatee beard
and about as much appearance of sentiment an you would expect from
a retired slaver, turned with a start and bade the performer stop
that "damned thing." "I've heard about enough of that," he added;
"give us something about the good country we're going to." A
murmur of adhesion ran round the car; the performer took the
instrument from his lips, laughed and nodded, and then struck into
a dancing measure; and, like a new Timotheus, stilled immediately
the emotion he had raised.
The day faded; the lamps were lit; a party of wild young men, who
got off next evening at North Platte, stood together on the stern
platform, singing "The Sweet By-and-bye" with very tuneful voices;
the chums began to put up their beds; and it seemed as if the
business of the day were at an end. But it was not so; for, the
train stopping at some station, the cars were instantly thronged
with the natives, wives and fathers, young men and maidens, some of
them in little more than nightgear, some with stable lanterns, and
all offering beds for sale. Their charge began with twenty-five
cents a cushion, but fell, before the train went on again, to
fifteen, with the bed-board gratis, or less than one-fifth of what
I had paid for mine at the Transfer. This is my contribution to
the economy of future emigrants.
A great personage on an American train is the newsboy. He sells
books (such books!), papers, fruit, lollipops, and cigars; and on
emigrant journeys, soap, towels, tin washing dishes, tin coffee
pitchers, coffee, tea, sugar, and tinned eatables, mostly hash or
beans and bacon. Early next morning the newsboy went around the
cars, and chumming on a more extended principle became the order of
the hour. It requires but a copartnery of two to manage beds; but
washing and eating can be carried on most economically by a
syndicate of three. I myself entered a little after sunrise into
articles of agreement, and became one of the firm of Pennsylvania,
Shakespeare, and Dubuque. Shakespeare was my own nickname on the
cars; Pennsylvania that of my bedfellow; and Dubuque, the name of a
place in the State of Iowa, that of an amiable young fellow going
west to cure an asthma, and retarding his recovery by incessantly
chewing or smoking, and sometimes chewing and smoking together. I
have never seen tobacco so sillily abused. Shakespeare bought a
tin washing-dish, Dubuque a towel, and Pennsylvania a brick of
soap. The partners used these instruments, one after another,
according to the order of their first awaking; and when the firm
had finished there was no want of borrowers. Each filled the tin
dish at the water filter opposite the stove, and retired with the
whole stock in trade to the platform of the car. There he knelt
down, supporting himself by a shoulder against the woodwork or one
elbow crooked about the railing, and made a shift to wash his face
and neck and hands; a cold, an insufficient, and, if the train is
moving rapidly, a somewhat dangerous toilet.
On a similar division of expense, the firm of Pennsylvania,
Shakespeare, and Dubuque supplied themselves with coffee, sugar,
and necessary vessels; and their operations are a type of what went
on through all the cars. Before the sun was up the stove would be
brightly burning; at the first station the natives would come on
board with milk and eggs and coffee cakes; and soon from end to end
the car would be filled with little parties breakfasting upon the
bed-boards. It was the pleasantest hour of the day.
There were meals to be had, however, by the wayside: a breakfast
in the morning, a dinner somewhere between eleven and two, and
supper from five to eight or nine at night. We had rarely less
than twenty minutes for each; and if we had not spent many another
twenty minutes waiting for some express upon a side track among
miles of desert, we might have taken an hour to each repast and
arrived at San Francisco up to time. For haste is not the foible
of an emigrant train. It gets through on sufferance, running the
gauntlet among its more considerable brethren; should there be a
block, it is unhesitatingly sacrificed; and they cannot, in
consequence, predict the length of the passage within a day or so.
Civility is the main comfort that you miss. Equality, though
conceived very largely in America, does not extend so low down as
to an emigrant. Thus in all other trains, a warning cry of "All
aboard!" recalls the passengers to take their seats; but as soon as
I was alone with emigrants, and from the Transfer all the way to
San Francisco, I found this ceremony was pretermitted; the train
stole from the station without note of warning, and you had to keep
an eye upon it even while you ate. The annoyance is considerable,
and the disrespect both wanton and petty.
Many conductors, again, will hold no communication with an
emigrant. I asked a conductor one day at what time the train would
stop for dinner; as he made no answer I repeated the question, with
a like result; a third time I returned to the charge, and then
Jack-in-office looked me coolly in the face for several seconds and
turned ostentatiously away. I believe he was half ashamed of his
brutality; for when another person made the same inquiry, although
he still refused the information, he condescended to answer, and
even to justify his reticence in a voice loud enough for me to
hear. It was, he said, his principle not to tell people where they
were to dine; for one answer led to many other questions, as what
o'clock it was? or, how soon should we be there? and he could not
afford to be eternally worried.
As you are thus cut off from the superior authorities, a great deal
of your comfort depends on the character of the newsboy. He has it
in his power indefinitely to better and brighten the emigrant's
lot. The newsboy with whom we started from the Transfer was a
dark, bullying, contemptuous, insolent scoundrel, who treated us
like dogs. Indeed, in his case, matters came nearly to a fight.
It happened thus: he was going his rounds through the cars with
some commodities for sale, and coming to a party who were at SEVEN-
UP or CASCINO (our two games), upon a bed-board, slung down a
cigar-box in the middle of the cards, knocking one man's hand to
the floor. It was the last straw. In a moment the whole party
were upon their feet, the cigars were upset, and he was ordered to
"get out of that directly, or he would get more than he reckoned
for." The fellow grumbled and muttered, but ended by making off,
and was less openly insulting in the future. On the other hand,
the lad who rode with us in this capacity from Ogden to Sacramento
made himself the friend of all, and helped us with information,
attention, assistance, and a kind countenance. He told us where
and when we should have our meals, and how long the train would
stop; kept seats at table for those who were delayed, and watched
that we should neither be left behind nor yet unnecessarily
hurried. You, who live at home at ease, can hardly realise the
greatness of this service, even had it stood alone. When I think
of that lad coming and going, train after train, with his bright
face and civil words, I see how easily a good man may become the
benefactor of his kind. Perhaps he is discontented with himself,
perhaps troubled with ambitions; why, if he but knew it, he is a
hero of the old Greek stamp; and while he thinks he is only earning
a profit of a few cents, and that perhaps exorbitant, he is doing a
man's work, and bettering the world.
I must tell here an experience of mine with another newsboy. I
tell it because it gives so good an example of that uncivil
kindness of the American, which is perhaps their most bewildering
character to one newly landed. It was immediately after I had left
the emigrant train; and I am told I looked like a man at death's
door, so much had this long journey shaken me. I sat at the end of
a car, and the catch being broken, and myself feverish and sick, I
had to hold the door open with my foot for the sake of air. In
this attitude my leg debarred the newsboy from his box of
merchandise. I made haste to let him pass when I observed that he
was coming; but I was busy with a book, and so once or twice he
came upon me unawares. On these occasions he most rudely struck my
foot aside; and though I myself apologised, as if to show him the
way, he answered me never a word. I chafed furiously, and I fear
the next time it would have come to words. But suddenly I felt a
touch upon my shoulder, and a large juicy pear was put into my
hand. It was the newsboy, who had observed that I was looking ill,
and so made me this present out of a tender heart. For the rest of
the journey I was petted like a sick child; he lent me newspapers,
thus depriving himself of his legitimate profit on their sale, and
came repeatedly to sit by me and cheer me up.
