Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1874 — The Troubles of a Somnambulist. [ARTICLE]

The Troubles of a Somnambulist.

Mortimer J. Loomis, says Max Adeler, is now one of the most violent of the denunciators of railway monopolies. Since liis last adventure on the cars he hates a railway worse than an Arapahote Indian hates a bald-headed Shaker. Loomis has fits of somnambulism occasionally, and at.sugh times he has an uncontrollable tendency to wander into dangerous places. More than once he has been surprised, upon waking, to find himself roosting on the -comb of the roof, or hanging headforemost down the well, with one leg around the bucket handle. He went out to Pittsburgh a few days ago, and when he entered the sleeping-car the thought struck him that he might get to prowling about during the night while asleep and walk off the platform into the better world. So he went to the brakeman and gave him a dollar, with strict instructions that if he saw him walking around that car in hia sleep to seize him and force him back at all hazards. Then Loomis turned in. About two o’clock Loomis awoke, and as the air of the car seemed stifliSg he determined to go out on the platform for a fresh breath or two. Just as he got to the door that vigilant brakeman saw him, grabbed hint, floored him and held him down. When Loomis recovered his breath he indignantly exclaimed: “You immortal ass! What d’ you mean? Lemme get up, I tell you; I’m as wide awake as you are.” But that myrmidon of a grasping corporation put another knee on Loomis’ breast, and insisted that Loomis was asleep; and then he called another brakeman and after a terrific struggle, during which Loomis received bumps and blows enough to wake an Egyptian mummy that had been dead for 6,000 years, the railroad man jammed him into a berth, put a trunk and eight carpet-bags on him and then sat on him to hold him down till morning The first thing Mr. Loomis asked for when he arrived in Pittsburgh was a respectable hospital where they cored the temporarily insane. He thinks his reason was partially dethroned by his effort to comprehend how that brakeman could have the face to ask him for another dollar because of the trouble Loomis gave him during the night. —The average car horse endures four years.