eluded him into the belief that he had been
metamorphosed into an elephant, and hadn't become accustomed to his
trunk. It puzzled me to know how or why he had been billeted on my
palatial shelf, for the whole of which I had paid; but as it was
rather a cold night, and there was something respectable in the
outline of that Roman nose, I turned my back on him and determined to
accept the situation, soothing myself with the reflection that if I
repeated the assault upon his nose, such an accident must be excused
as a fortuitous result of his unauthorized intrusion.

I had just got freshly enveloped in the "honey-dew of slumber" when
my _compagnon de voyage_ began to snore, and in the most unendurable
manner, the effect of which was nothing improved by his proximity.
It seemed to penetrate every sense and sensation of my body, and to
intensify the extreme of misery which I had begun to endure in the
hard effort to sleep. His snore was a medley of snuffing and snorting,
with an abortive demi-semi aristocratic sort of a sneeze; while to
add to the effect of this three-stringed inspiration there was in each
aspiration a tremulous and swooning neigh. I had been reading _The
Origin of Species_ and _The Descent of Man_ for several previous days,
and began to think I had discovered some wandering Jewish lost link
between man and the monkey, and that I actually had him or it for a
bedfellow; but by the dim light of the car-lamps I managed to see his
hands, which had orthodox nails. I was now thoroughly awake, and found
myself the victim of a perfect bedlam of snorers from one end of the
car to the other, making a concatenation of hideous noises only to be
equaled by a menagerie; though, to give the devil his due, a earful of
wild animals would never make such an uproar when fast asleep.

It is a well-known fact that when one's ears prick up at night and
find the slightest noise an obstacle to slumber, after much tossing
and turning, and some imprecating, tired Nature will finally succumb
from sheer exhaustion: she even conquers the howling of dogs holding
converse with the moon and the cater-wauling of enamored cats. Cats,
and even cataracts, I have defied, but of all noises to keep a sober
man awake I know of none to take the palm from the snoring in that
car. There seemed to be a bond of sympathy, too, among the snorers,
for those who did not snore were the only ones who did not sleep.

The varieties of sound were so intensely