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Turning to Gordon and his companion, he called cheerfully: "Come, men, that Pullman's full of blankets; we must get them out for the women and children before it's too late. It's too dark to find our umbrellas. I believe that fool conductor's got mine anyhow and gone home with it. I haven't seen him anywhere." In a few minutes, he had blankets for all the passengers who had lost their clothes.
This, however, is to be avoided by affixing a little card in your hat, which the conductor gives you, so that by inspection he knows at once whether his passenger is legitimate or not. I did not travel by one of "Pullman's Silver Palace Drawing-room Cars," though I examined them, and admired their many comforts.
A couple of hours out, dinner was announced an 'event' to those of us who had yet to experience what it is to eat in one of Pullman's hotels on wheels; so, stepping into the car next forward of our sleeping palace, we found ourselves in the dining-car. It was a revelation to us, that first dinner on Sunday.
If for any selfish purpose the trade union of railway managers had done what their sacred brakemen and divine firemen did had decreed that "no wheel should turn," until Mr. Pullman's men should return to work they would have found themselves all in jail the second day.
Mixed in my thinks. When I came to I was pretty busy putting my lunch," explained the other with simple realism. "One of Mr. Pullman's seats butted me in the stomach. They ain't upholstered as soft as you'd think to look at 'em. I went reeling around, looking for Miss I. O. W., she being alone, you know, and I thought she might need some looking after.
All the hotels, bars, and stores, are full of their advertisements: "The Shortest Route to the East" "Pullman's Palace Cars Run on this Line" "The Route of all Nations" "The Grand Route, viâ Niagara," such are a few specimens of these urgent announcements. I decided to select the route viâ Chicago, Detroit, Niagara, and down the Hudson river to New York; and made my arrangements accordingly.
I can now look back from one of Pullman's Palace cars, over a period of forty years, and see that train together with all the improvements that have been made in railroad travel since that time.... I am not machinist enough to give a description of the locomotive that drew us over the road that day, but I recollect distinctly the general make-up of the train.
On arriving in Washington, which city I instantly recognized from reading the history of George, I left the car so hastily that I forgot to fee Mr. Pullman's representative. I went immediately to the Capitol. In a spirit of jeu d'esprit I had had made a globular representation of a "rolling stone." It was of wood, painted a dark color, and about the size of a small cannon ball.
The bull-necked Councilman of uncertain grammar evidently felt that Mr. Pullman's modest interference on behalf of the tax-payer was a most gross impertinence. He felt himself an injured being, and his companions shared his indignation. We proceed to another and better specimen.
A long line of railroad presidents and superintendents had come to the depot to see him off, and tipped their hats as he glided out into the open air. The car was an improvement on Pullman's best. Three golden goblets stood at the end, and every time he turned the spigot of the water cask, it foamed soda-water vanilla if you turned it one way, strawberry if you turned it the other.
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