Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1882 — Railroad Sociability. [ARTICLE]

Railroad Sociability.

LiurimJe Boojnerang. “Speaking about the sociability of travelers,” said the man .with the crutehes and a watch pocket over his eye, -“l never got so well acquainted .with passengers on a train, as I did the other day on the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad. We were going at the rate of about thirty miles an hb'ur, and another train from the other direction, telesooped us. We were all thrown Into each others society, and brought into immediate social contact, so to speak. “1 went over and sat in the lap (if a corpulent lady from Manitoba, and a girl Aram Chicago jumped over nine seats and sat down oq the plug hat pf a preacher from La Crosse, with so much, tlifiid girlish enthusiasm, that it shoved nis hat clear down over l hih shoulders, i “Everybody seemed to lay aside the usual 000 l reserve of strangers, and we made oufselv'es entirety at home. “A shy young man with an emailelated oil doth valise, left bis own sat down iu a lunch basket where a bridal couple seemed to‘bo wrestling with their first picnic. Do you suppose that reticent young man would have done such a thing on ordinary occasions? Do you think if he had been at a celebration at home, that he would have risen impetuously, and gone where those people wereeatiugby themselves, and sat down in the cranoerry jeiiy ol a total stranger? “1 snould rather think uot. “ Whv, one old man who probably at htmie Jed the class meeting, and who was as dignified as Roscoe Conkling’s fatner, was eating a piece of custard pie when we met the other train, and be left bis pwn seat and went over to the front end of the car and stabbed that piece of custard pie into the ear of a beautiful widow from lowa. MPsople. traveling somehow forget of their borne lives, and form acquaintances that sometimes last through life.”