train, leaving St. Louis, wondering whether Kansas
City, whither we were bound, would prove to be but one
more city like the rest--a place with skyscrapers and
shops and people resembling, almost exactly, the sky-
scrapers and shops and people of a dozen other cities we
had seen.

Morning in the sleeping car found us less concerned
about the character of cities than about our coffee.
Coffee was not to be had upon the train. In cheerless
emptiness we sat and waited for the station.

While my berth was being turned into its daytime
aspect, I was forced to accept a seat beside a stranger:
a little man with a black felt hat, a weedy mustache of
neutral color, and an Elk's button. I had a feeling that
he meant to talk with me; a feeling which amounted to
dread. Nothing appeals to me at seven in the morning;
least of all a conversation. At that hour my enthusiasm
shows only a low blue flame, like a gas jet turned down
almost to the point of going out. And in the feeble light
of that blue flame, my fellow man becomes a vague
shape, threatening unsolicited civilities. I do not like
the hour of seven in the morning anywhere, and if there
is one condition under which I loathe it most, it is before
breakfast in a smelly sleeping car. I saw the little man
regarding me. He was about to speak. And there I
was, absolutely at his mercy, without so much as a news-
paper behind which to shield myself.

"Are you from New York?" he asked.
With about the same amount of effort it would take

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