of Christmas now. Presently, one of the
party said: "Did any of you ever spend a Christmas on the cars? If you
have not, thank Heaven, and pray to be preserved from it henceforth, for
I've done it, and I tell you it's next to purgatory. I spent one once,
stuck in a snow-drift, or almost stuck, for we were ten hours late, and
missed all connections, and the Christmas I had expected to spend with
friends, I passed in a nasty car with a surly Pullman conductor, an
impudent mulatto porter, and a lot of fools, all of whom could have
murdered each other, not to speak of a crying baby whose murder was
perhaps the only thing all would have united on."

This harsh speech showed that the subject was about exhausted, and
someone, a man who had come in only in time to hear the last speaker,
had just hazarded the remark, in a faint imitation of an English accent,
that the sub-officials in this country were a surly, ill-conditioned
lot, anyhow, and always were as rude as they dared to be, when Lesponts,
who had looked at the speaker lazily, said:

"Yes, I have spent a Christmas on a sleeping-car, and, strange to say, I
have a most delightful recollection of it."

This was surprising enough to have gained him a hearing anyhow, but
the memory of the occasion was evidently sufficiently strong to carry
Lesponts over obstacles, and he went ahead.

"Has any of you ever taken the night train that goes from here South
through the Cumberland and Shenandoah Valleys, or from Washington to
strike that train?"

No one seemed to have done so, and he went on:

"Well, do it, and you can even do it Christmas, if you get the right
conductor. It's well worth doing the first chance you get, for it's
almost the prettiest country in the world that you go through; there is
nothing that I've ever seen lovelier than parts of the Cumberland and
Shenandoah Valleys, and the New River Valley is just as pretty,--that
background of blue beyond those rolling hills, and all,--you know,
McPheeters?" McPheeters nodded, and he proceeded:

"I always go that way now when I go South. Well, I went South one winter
just at Christmas, and I took that train by accident. I was going to New
Orleans to spend Christmas, and had expected to have gotten off to be
there several days beforehand, but an unlooked-for matter had turned
up and prevented my getting away, and I had given up the idea of going,
when I changed my mind: the fact is, I was in a row with a friend of
min