of House 85.

It did. Toward eight, as I have hinted, he transferred from
rocking-chair to cot. He was not afflicted with troublesome nerves. At
times he was an entire minute in falling asleep. Usually, however, his
time was something under the half; and he slept with the innocent,
undisturbed sleep of a babe for at least twelve unbroken hours, unless
the necessity of getting across the "cut" to his engine absolutely
prohibited. Just there was the trouble. His first gentle, slumberous
breath sounded like a small boy sliding down the sheet-iron roof of 35.
His second resembled a force of carpenters tearing out the half-grown
partitions. His third--but mere words are an absurdity. At times the
noises from his gorilla-like throat softened down till one merely
fancied himself in the hog-corral of a Chicago stockyards; at others we
prayed that we might at once be transferred there. A thousand times
during the night we were certain he was on the very point of choking to
death, and sat up in bed praying he wouldn't, and offering our month's
salary to charity if he would; and through all our fatiguing anguish he
snorted undisturbedly on. In House 35 he was known as "the Sloth." It
was a gentle and kindly title.

There were a few inexperienced inmates who had not yet utterly given up
hope. The long hours of the night were spent in solemn conference.
Pounding on the walls with hammers, chairs, and shoe-heels was like
singing a lullaby. One genius invented a species of foghorn which
proved very effective--in waking up all Empire east of the tracks,
except "the Sloth." Some took to dropping their heavier and more
dispensable possessions over the partition. One memorable night a
fellow-sufferer cast over a young dry-goods box which, bouncing from
the snorer's figure to the floor, caused him to lose a beat--one; and
the feat is still one of the proud memories of 35. On Sundays when all
the rest of the world was up and shaved and breakfasted and off on the
8:39 of a brilliant, sunny day to Panama, "the Sloth" would be still
imperturbably snorting and choking in the depths of his cot. And in the
evening, as the train roamed back through the fresh cool jungle dusk
and deposited us at Empire station, and we crossed the wooden bridge
before the hotel and began to climb the graveled path behind, hoping
against hope that we might find crape on that door, from the night
ahead would break on our cars a sound as of a hippopotamus struggling