Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/315

 I have always been accustomed to dull towns, and like St. Louis better than Chicago because St. Louis people are not so struck on themselves. Every citizen of Chicago is as badly spoilt as a pretty woman It being the night before Good Friday, which is a holiday here, there was a rush of passengers for Johannesburg, and the friendly conductor could not get us a compartment to ourselves. But I was quartered with two very interesting and polite men in a compartment for four, and rather enjoyed the night ride Let the passenger conductors on American railroads prepare to scream with horror and indignation over an incident I am about to relate. The train on which we rode from Bloemfontein to Johannesburg was composed of twelve coaches, nearly all of them used as sleepers at night. The conductor not only took up the tickets, and looked after the train, but he acted as porter in all the sleepers, and made up the beds. The crowd was so large that we did not get our beds made up until midnight, although we left Bloemfontein at nine o'clock. We paid sixty cents each for the use of the beds, when we finally got them. The beds were done up in separate bundles, two sheets, two pillows and two blankets in each bundle, and the conductor of the passenger train was compelled to take these out of lockers, and change all the seats into beds. He had no help whatever, and all the time he was at work, passengers were snarling at him in an impudent way. I have never before seen anything like it anywhere. At every station the conductor was compelled to go out to the platform, and, when the train started, he didn't say "All aboard," but "All seats." Translated, "All seats" means: "The