Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1881 — SLEEPING CARS FOR MEN. [ARTICLE]

SLEEPING CARS FOR MEN.

The Perils to which an Uapreteeted Editor was Subjected. H There Is a good deal of Interest man* Ifeated these days on the part of the American people relative to the matter of separate sleeping cats for the two sexes. It Is a move ia the right direction, and we hope it will win. As It Is now, no gentleman traveling alone is safe. Several months ago, entirely alono, we traveled from lAramie to Chicago and back, making the round trip with no escort whatever! Our wife was detained at home, and that entire journey wm made with no one to whom we could look for information. When we returned our hair had turned perfectly white with horror of those dreadful nlghta. ... There was one woman from Philadelphia, whose name we shall not mention, and who rode all the way between Omaha and Chicago in our rar. Almost the first thing when we started out of Omaha, she began to make advances toward us by asking if we would hold her lunch basket while site went after a drink. She also asked us for our kyife to peel an orange. These things looked small and Insignifleent, but in the light of later

developements they are of vital Importance. That evening we saw with horror that the woman’s section was adioining our own. We asked the. conductor If this could not be changed; but he only laughed coldly, and told us to soak our head, or some such unfeeling remark. This is one bad feature of the present system. A man traveling alone gets no sympathy or assistance from the conductor. It would tie impossible to describe the horrors of that night. AU throu h its vigils we suffered on until near morning, when tired nature yielded, and we fell into a troubled sleep. There we lay, fair and beautiful, in the soft and gray of approaching day, thousands of miles from our home, and, less than ten feet away, a great, horrid woman, from Pennyslvania, to whom we had not even Ls-en introduced. How* we could have slept so soundly under the circumstances we are yet unable to tell,' hut after perhaps twenty minutes of slumber we saw above the head board of our berth, and

peeping over at us, the face of that woman. With a wild bound, we were on our feet in tht* isle of the car. The other births had all disappeared but ours.. The other passengers where sitting quietly in their seats, and it was half past nine o’clock. The woman from Pennsylvania was in the day coach. It was only a horrid dream. But supposing it bail been'a reality! And any man traveling alone is liable to tie iusulte-l at any time. We do not <-are for luxury in traveling. All we want is the assurance that we are safe, The experience which we have narrated aliove is only one of a thousand. Did you ever note the careworn l<a>k of the man who is traveling alone? The wild, haunted expression on the countenance, ami the horrible appresion depicted there? * You may talk about the various causes that are leading men downward to early graves, but the nervous -strain induced by the fear that while they are taking out their false teeth or buttoning their suspenders, prying eyesZ<re looking over the foot-board of the berths is constructing more newmade graves than consumption or tlie Ute* war.