{1}"Three nights and four days in the cars!" These words haunted us and hindered our rest. What should we eat and drink, and wherewithal should we be clothed? No Scripture was strong enough to calm our anxious thoughts; no friend's experience of comfort and ease on the journey sounded credible enough to disarm our fears. "Dust is dust," said we, "and railroad is railroad. All restaurant cooking in America is intolerable. We shall be wretched; nevertheless, we go." . . .

{2}There is a handsome black boy at the Sherman House, Chicago, who remembers, perhaps, how many parcels of "life preservers" of one kind and another were lifted into our drawing-room on the Pullman cars. But nobody else will ever know.

{3}Our drawing-room? Yes, our drawing-room; and this is the plan of it: A smalls square room, occupying the whole width of the car, excepting a narrow passage-way on one side; four windows, two opening on this passage-way and two opening out of doors; two doors, one opening into the car and one opening into a tiny closet, which held a washstand basin. This closet had another door, opening into another drawing-room beyond. No one but the occupants of the two drawing-rooms could have access to the bath-closet. On one side of our drawing-room a long sofa; on the other two large arm-chairs, which could be wheeled so as to face the sofa. Two shining spittoons and plenty of looking-glass, hooks high up on the sides, and silver-plated rods for curtains overhead, completed the list of furniture. Room on the floor for bags and bundles and baskets; room, too, for a third chair, and a third chair we had for a part of the way, - - an easy-chair, with a sloping back, which belonged to another of these luxurious Pullman cars. A perplexing sense of domesticity crept over us as we settled into corners, hung up our cologne bottles, and missed the cat! Then we shut both our doors, and smiled triumphantly into each other's faces, as the train glided out of the station. No one can realize until he has journeyed in the delightful quiet and privacy of these small drawing-rooms on the Pullman cars how much of the wear and tear of railroad travel is the result of the contact with people. Be as silent, as unsocial, as surly as you please, you cannot avoid being more or less impressed by the magnetism of every human being in the car. Their faces attract or repel; you like, you dislike, you wonder, you pity, you resent, you loathe. In the course of twenty-four hours you have expended a great amount of nerve force, to no purpose; have borne hours of vicarious suffering, by which nobody is benefited. Adding to this hardly calculable amount of mental wear and tear the physical injury of breathing bad air, we sum up a total of which it is unpleasant to think. Of the two evils the last is the worst. The heart may, at least, try to turn away from unhappy people and wicked people, to whom it can do no good. But how is the body to steel itself against unwashed people and diseased people with whom it is crowded, elbow to elbow, and knee to knee, for hours? Our first day in our drawing-room stole by like a thief. The noon surprised us, and the twilight took us unawares. . . .

{4}"Make your beds now, ladies?" said the chamberman, whose brown face showed brighter brown for his gray uniform and brass buttons.

{5}"Yes," we replied. "That is just what we most desire to see."

{6}Presto! The seats of the arm-chairs pull out, and meet in the middle. The backs of the arm-chairs pull down, and lie flat on level with the seats. The sofa pulls out and opens into double width. The roof of our drawing-room opens and lets down, and makes two more bedsteads, which we, luckily, do not want; but from under their eaves come mattresses, pillows, sheets, pillow-cases, and curtains. The beds are made; the roof shut up again; the curtains hung across the glass part of the doors; the curtains drawn across the passage-way windows; the doors shut and locked; and we undress as entirely and safely as if we were in the best bedroom of a house not made with wheels. Because we are so comfortable we lie awake a little, but not long; and that is the whole story of nights on the cars when the cars are built by Pullman and the sleeping is done in drawing-rooms. . . .

{7}We cross the Missouri at Council Bluffs; begin grumbling at the railroad corporations for forcing us to take a transfer train across the river; but find ourselves plunged into the confusion of Omaha before we have finished railing at the confusion of her neighbor. Now we see for the first time the distinctive expression of American overland travel. Here all luggage is weighed and rechecked for points further west. An enormous shed is filled with it. Four and five deep stand the anxious owners, at a high wooden wall, behind which nobody may go. Everybody holds up checks, and gesticulates and beckons. There seems to be no system; but undoubtedly there is. Side by side with the rich and flurried New-Yorker stands the poor and flurried emigrant. Equality rules. Big bundles of feather-beds, tied up in blue check, red chests, corded with rope, get ahead of Saratoga trunks. Many languages are spoken. German, Irish, French, Spanish, a little English, and all varieties of American, I heard during thirty minutes in that luggage-shed. Inside the wall was a pathetic sight,- -a poor German woman on her knees before a chest, which had burst open on the journey. It seemed as if its whole contents could not be worth five dollars, - -so old, so faded, so coarse were the clothes and so battered were the utensils. But it was evidently all she owned; it was the home she had brought with her from the Fatherland, and would be the home she would set up in the prairie. The railroad-men were good to her, and were helping her with ropes and nails. This comforted me somewhat; but it seemed almost a sin to be journeying luxuriously on the same day and train with that poor soul. . . .

{8}Toward night of this day, we saw our first Indian woman. We were told it was a woman. It was, apparently, made of old India-rubber, much soaked, seamed, and torn. It was thatched at top with a heavy roof of black hair, which hung down from a ridge-like line in the middle. It had sails of dingy-brown canvas, furled loosely around it, confined and caught here and there irregularly, fluttering and falling open wherever a rag of a different color could be shown underneath. It moved about on brown, bony, stalking members, for which no experience furnishes name; it mopped, and mowed, and gibbered, and reached out through the air with more brown, bony, clutching members; from which one shrank as from the claws of a bear. "Muckee! muckee!" it cried, opening wide a mouth toothless, but red. It was the most abject, loathly living thing I ever saw. I shut my eyes, and turned away. Presently, I looked again. It had passed on; and I saw on its back, gleaming out from under a ragged calash-like arch of basket-work, a smooth, shining, soft baby face, brown as a brown nut, silken as silk, sweet, happy, innocent, confiding, as if it were babe of a royal line, borne in royal state. All below its head was helpless mummy,- -body, legs, arms; feet bandaged tight, swathed in a solid roll, strapped to a flat board, and swung by a leathern band, going around the mother's breast. Its great, soft, black eyes looked fearlessly at everybody. It was as genuine and blessed a baby as any woman ever bore. Idle and thoughtless passengers jeered the squaw, saying: "Sell us the pappoose." "Give you greenbacks for the pappoose." Then, and not till then, I saw a human look in the India-rubber face. The eyes could flash, and the mouth could show scorn, as well as animal greed. The expression was almost malignant, but it bettered the face; for it made it the face of a woman, of a mother. . . .

{9}For half of a day we looked out on such scenes as these, [which rival "the sad and subtle beauty of Mediterranean slopes,"] and did not weary. It is monotonous; it is desolate: but it is solemn and significant. The day will come when this gray wilderness will be red with roses, golden with fruit, glad and rich and full of voices. At noon, at Evanstown, the observation car was attached to the train: (when will railroad companies be wise enough to know that no train ought to be run anywhere without such an open car?) Twice too many passengers crowded in; everybody opened his umbrella in somebody's else eye, and unfolded his map of the road on other knees than his own; but after a few miles the indifferent people and those who dreaded cinders, smoke, and the burning of skin, drifted back again into the other cars, leaving the true lovers of sky, air, and out-door room to enjoy the [canyons] in peace.

{10}At Ogden[, Utah] the Union Pacific Railroad ends and the Central Pacific Railroad begins. The Pullman drawing-room cars also end, and the silver palace-cars begin. . . . our first anxiety as to whether we should each get a "section" was soon merged in our second, which was almost as great- -what we should do with ourselves in it. A latent sense of justice restrains me from attempting to describe a section. It is impossible to be just to a person or a thing disliked. I dislike the sleeping-car sections more than I ever have disliked, ever shall dislike, or ever can dislike any thing in the world. Therefore, I will not describe one. I will speak only of the process of going to bed and getting up in it. Fancy a mattress laid on the bottom shelf in your cupboard, and the cupboard-door shut. You have previously made choice among your possessions which ones you will have put underneath your shelf, where you cannot get at them, and which ones you must have, and will therefore keep all night on the foot of your bed (that is, on your own feet). Accurate memory and judicious selection, under such circumstances, are impossible. No sooner is the cupboard-door shut than you remember that several indispensable articles are under the shelf. But the door is locked, and you can't get out. By which I mean that the porter has put up the curtain in front of your section, and of the opposite section, and you have partially undressed, and can't step out into the narrow aisle without encountering the English gentleman, who is going by to heat water on the stove at the end of the car; and, even if you didn't encounter him, you can't get at the things which have been stowed away under your shelf, unless you lie down at full length on the floor to reach them; and you can't lie down at full length on the floor, because most of the floor is under your opposite neighbor's shelf. So I said the door was locked simply to express the hopelessness of the situation. Then you sit cross-legged on your bed; because, of course, you can't sit on the edge of the shelf after the cupboard-door is shut- -that is, the curtain is put up so close to the edge of your bed that, if you do sit there in the natural human manner, your knees and feet will be in the way of the English gentleman when he passes. Sitting cross-legged on your bed, you take off a few of your clothes, if you have courage; and then you cast about to think what you shall do with them. It is quite light in the cupboard, for there is a little kerosene lamp in a tiny glass-doored niche in the wall; and it gives light enough to show you that there isn't a hook or an edge of any thing on which a single article can be hung. You gaze drearily around on the smooth, shining panels of hard wood. It is a very handsome cupboard, a good deal plated, besides being made of fine hard woods, into which you can't drive even a pin. At last you have an inspiration. You stand up on the edge of your bed, and, grasping the belt of your dress firmly in each hand, boldly thrust one arm out above the curtain, and hook the belt over the curtain-rod. It swings safely! You sink back triumphant and exhausted; come down on your travelling-bag, and upset it; the cork comes out of the hartshorn bottle, and the hartshorn runs into the borax. Of course, you can't cross the Alkali Desert without a good supply of counter alkalies. By the time you have saved the remainder of these, and propped the travelling bag up again, you are frightfully cramped from sitting so long cross-legged. So you lie out straight a few minutes to rest. Then you get up again, more cautiously than before, on the edge of the bed, and hook and pin a few more garments around the curtain-rod. Just as you are looking on the last one, and feeling quite elated, the car gives a sudden jerk, and out you go, head foremost into the aisle into the very arms of the English gentleman. Being an English gentleman, he would look the other way if he could; but how can he? He must hold you up! You don't know just how you clamber back. Nothing seems very clear to you for some minutes except the English gentleman's face, which is indelibly stamped on your brain.

{11}You don't sit up for the next five or six minutes, nor make a sound. Then you reflect that the night is really to be ten hours long, and that there are hairpins and hair. There is no need of greater explicitness.

{12}The feeblest imagination can supply details and dilemmas. You sit up again, and soon become absorbed in necessary transactions. You glance up to the left! Horrors upon horrors! The cupboard-door has suddenly swung off its hinges! That is, the flank piece of the curtain, which is intended to turn a corner at the head of the bed, and shut you off from your neighbor in the next section, being not wide enough, and having no sort of contrivance to fasten it to the wooden partition, has slid along on the rod, and left you just as much exposed to the eyes of all passers-by as if your cupboard had no door at all. You drop- -well - -all you have in your hands, seize the curtain and hold it in place with your thumb and finger, while you grope for a pin to pin it with. Pin it, indeed! To what? I have before mentioned that the cupboard is of panels of highly-polished hard wood and silver plating. The cars are called "silver" and "palace" for this reason. At last you pin it to the upper edge of your pillow. That seems insecure; especially so, taking into account the fact that you are a restless sleeper. But it is the only thing to be done. Having done this, you look down at the foot of the bed, and find a similar yawning aperture there. You pin this flank curtain to the blanket, and pin the blanket to the mattress. You do all these things, getting about on your knees, with the car shaking and rocking violently over an unusually rough bit of road. When the flap is firmly pinned at the head and at the foot. you lean back against the middle of the back of your cupboard, to rest. The glass door outside your little lamp is very hot. You burn your elbow on it, and involuntarily scream.

{13}"What is the matter, ma'am?" says the friendly conductor, who happens to be passing. You start up. That is, you would, if you could; but you can't, because you are sitting cross-legged, and have the cramp besides. But it is too late. The cupboard-door is split in the middle, and there are the conductor's sympathizing eyes looking directly in upon you. It is evidently impossible to have the curtains made tight at the head and foot of your shelf without their parting in the middle. They are too scant. At this despair sets in. However, you unpin the flap at the foot of the bed, repin it so as to leave only a small crack, through which you hope your neighbor will be too busy to look. Then you pin the two curtains together firmly in the middle, all the way up and down. Then you lie down, with your head on your travelling bag, and resolve to do no more till the cars stop. You fall asleep from exhaustion. When you awake, darkness reigns; a heavy and poisonous air fills your cupboard; the car is dashing on through the night faster than ever. Timidly you unpin the curtains, and peer out. The narrow aisle is curtained from one end to the other; boots are set out at irregular intervals; snores rise in hideous chorus about you; everybody has gone to bed, nobody has opened his window, and most of the ventilators are shut. With all the haste you can make, you try to open the window at the foot of your bed. Alas! while the day lasted you neglected to learn the trick of the fastening; now the night has come, in which no man can undo a car-window. You take the skin off your fingers; you bruise your knuckles; you wrench your shoulder and back with superhuman strains,- -all the time sitting cross-legged. At last, just as you have made up your mind to follow the illustrious precedent of Mrs. Kemble's elbow, you hit the spring by accident, and, in your exultation, push the window wide open. A fierce and icy blast sweeps in, and your mouth is filled with cinders in a second. This will never do. Now, how to get the window partly down! This takes longer than it took to get it up; but you finally succeed. By this time you are so exhausted that absolute indifference to all things except rest seizes you. You slip in between the sheets, and shut your eyes. As you doze off, you have a vague impression that you hear something tumble off the foot of the bed into the aisle. You hope it is your boots, and not your travelling-bag, with the bottles in it; but you would not get up again to see,- -no, not if the whole car-load of passengers were to be waked up by a pungent odor of ammonia and alcohol proceeding from your cupboard. Strange to say, you sleep. Your dreams are nightmares,- -but still you sleep through till daylight.

{14}As soon as you awake you spring up and listen. All is still. Some of the snores still continue. You put up a fervent ejaculation of gratitude that you have waked so early. You resume the cross-legged position, and look about you for your possessions. It was your travelling-bag, after all, which fell off the shelf. You find it upside down on the floor in the aisle. You find, also, one boot. The other cannot be found. A horrible fear seizes you that it has gone out of the window. As calmly as your temperament will permit, you go on putting your remains together. The car is running slowly; and, all things considered, you think you are doing pretty well, when suddenly you encounter, in a glistening panel on the back of your cupboard, close to the head of your bed, a sight which throws you into new perplexity. There is- -yes, it is- -the face of the English gentleman. But what does it mean that the eyes are closed and a red silk handkerchief is bound about his florid brow? While you stare incredulously, the face turns on its pillow. A sleepy hand stretches up and rubs one eye. The eye opens, gazes languidly about, closes again, and the English gentleman sinks off into his morning nap. You seize your pillow, prop it up against the shining panel, so as to cut off this extremely involuntary view; then you stop dressing, and think out the phenomenon. It is very simple. The partitions between the sections do not join the walls of the car by two inches or more. The polished panel just behind this space is a perfect mirror, reflecting a part of each section; then you glance guiltily down to the similar mirror at the foot of your bed. Sure enough, the same thing! There you see the head of an excellent German frau, whom you had observed the day before. She also is sound asleep. You prop your other pillow up in that corner, lest she should awake; and then you hurry on your clothes stealthily as a thief. The boot, however, cannot be found, and you are at last constrained to go to the dressing-room without it. The dressing-room is at the further end of the car. Early as you are, fellow-women are there before you- -three of them; one in possession of the washbowl, two waiting for their turn. You fall into line, thankful for being only the fourth. You sit bashfully on somebody's valise, while these strangers make their toilets. You reflect on the sweet and wonderful power of adaptation which distinguishes some natures; the guileless trust in the kindliness of their own sex which enables some women to treat all other women as if they were their sisters. . . .

{15}When you reach your cupboard, Frank, the handsome black porter, has already transformed your bed into two chairs. The bedding is all put away out of sight; and there, conspicuously awaiting you, stands the missing boot, on a chair. You are not proud of your boots. For good reasons you decided to wear them on this journey; but false shame wrings you as you wonder if everybody has seen how very shabby that shoe is.

{16}The English gentleman is in the aisle, putting on his boots. The German frau is bustling about in a very demi-dress. Nobody seems to mind anybody; and, now that the thing is over with, you laugh to think how droll it all was. And so the day begins.

Susan Coolidge
"A Few Hints on the California Journey"
Excerpts transcribed from the original printed text: Scribner's Monthly, May, 1873 (pp. 25- 31).

What It Cost

{17}The price of a ticket to San Francisco and back over the Union Pacific and Central Pacific roads is a little less than three hundred dollars. To this must be added the expenses of seven or eight days' meals - - averaging three dollars a day, also the additional expense of a compartment in the Pullman car. Without this latter the journey would be unendurably fatiguing; with it, it is surprisingly comfortable. . . .

{18}"A sleeping berth from New York to San Francisco can be procured for eleven dollars, which certainly sounds remarkably cheap. But this does not mean a section, or even half a section; it refers to the minimum of space, that is, half of one of the berths, upper or under, three other persons occupying the remainder of the section. Now few persons can be really comfortable with less than a whole section - - certainly no lady traveling alone could be, - - and a whole section costs forty-four dollars. It will be seen therefore that a compartment in the P. P. C. [Pullman Palace Car] is a considerable item in the expenses of the trip. . . .

What to Carry

{19}Two things are to be considered in packing a trunk for San Francisco - - wieght and climate. Every article of baggage is weighed on the Pacific Railroad. One hundred pounds are allowed to each passenger; for every pound additional he is charged at the rate of fifteen dollars a hundred-weight. [Because the climate in California is so cold, "unless one visits Southern California,"] there is absolutely no use for piques, muslin gowns, fluted wrappers and all the numberless appointments of our summer toilettes. . . . The washing of such diaphanous articles is an expensive item, too. San Francisco laundries being in the habit of charging from three to five dollars a dozen, though the Chinamen, who wash very fairly, ask considerably less. My advice to women therefore would be: provide yourself with a warm, substantial traveling dress, and take one other suit, silk or cashmere, something that will answer for the hotel dinner-table and for going about the city. This is all you will need, unless you carry letters of introduction and propose to see something of San Francisco society, in which case a handsome dinner or evening dress might be necessary. There will be warm days here and there, especially on the railroad coming home; and for these, half a dozen linen or cambric waists should be provided to be put on at any moment when the heat becomes oppressive. You will also want a thick outside wrap, plenty of thick boots and gloves, a hat with a brim to it, a relay of grenadine veils, and, by all means, an old water-proof cloak, to e used in stages or on horseback as a protection against dust. . . .

{20}There are six days and five nights to be spent on the railroad between Chicago and San Francisco, so a large bag or small valise will be needed for use on the cars. . . . In this bag should be put, beside night-dress, change of linen, etc., plenty of clean collars, cuffs, pocket-handkerchiefs and stockings, a bottle of cologne, a phial of powdered borax to soften the hard water of the alkali district, a warm flannel sack for the chilly nights, - - which even in midsummer must, in those high altitudes, be provided against, soap, brushes, combs, a whisk-broom, a pocket pincushion, a brandy flask, and small quantities of two or three of the simplest medicines. Old and easy boots should be chosen for the journey. I should advise everybody to be provided with two linen dusters. Dust is the great foe to comfort on the Pacific Railroad. No brushing, no shaking removes it. It sifts, it penetrates, it pervades everywhere. After two or three days you grow to hate yourself. some ladies whom we met wore barege caps, which drew tightly with an elastic cord over all their hair and kept it free from dust. This was an admirable device, and I recommend it.

{21}With regard to luncheon-baskets. The food provided at eating stations on the Pacific Railroad is fairly good - - wonderfully so, considering the uninhabited country through which the road passes and the isolation of many of the stations. . . . It is true that it was necessary to look at one's watch to tell whether it was breakfast, dinner or supper that we were eating, these meals presenting invariable the same salient features of beefsteak, fried eggs, fried potato. Sometimes the steak was a little tougher and was called antelope. One grows very weary of this sameness of diet. . . . Taking all in all, a traveler can get along very well without private supplies. Still, there are times when they save embarrassment. As, for instance, when . . . the rush of diners is so great that you find it impossible to catch the eye of the Chinese waiter till it is too late to make him of the slightest use. At such times you are glad to have a lunch-basket, and fall back on your Albert biscuit, orange marmalade, or whatever simple stores it may contain. These stores can be replenished at various points along the road if necessary. At Omaha and at Ogden fresh rolls and cold roasted chickens are to be had; at several other places crackers, canned meats, etc. . . .

{22}My last piece of advice to everybody who is thinking of the California journey is, Go! don't give it up! For it is a sweet and compensating fact, that the pleasures of travel survive its pains. "The tent removes; the vision stays." The discomforts, the heat and dust, the weariness by the way, the trifling vexations, are soon forgotten; while the novelty and freshness, the beautiful sights, the wider horizon, the increased compass and comprehension, remain to refresh us always.

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