one more night; then he is off to St. Louis again--started on a fresh
round of his eternal schedule.

Talk of tips to Lemuel! His face lengthens. You may not believe it,
white man, but Lemuel made fifty-three cents in tips on the last trip
from New York to Chicago. You can understand the man who gave him the
Columbian antique; but Lemuel believes there can be no future too warm
for that skinny man who gave him the three pennies! He thinks the
gentleman might at least have come across with a Subway ticket. It is
all legal tender to him.

All that saves this porter's bacon is the fact that he is in charge of
the car--for some three hundred miles of its eastbound run he is acting
as sleeping-car conductor, for which consolidated job he draws down a
proportionate share of forty-two dollars a month. This is a small sop,
however, to Lemuel. He turns and tells you how, on the last trip, he
came all the way from St. Louis to New York--two nights on the
road--without ever a "make-down," as he calls preparing a berth. No
wonder then that he has difficulty in making fifty dollars a month, with
his miserable tips on the lean run.

Nor is that all. Though Lemuel is permitted three hours' sleep--on the
bunk in the washroom on the long runs--from midnight to three o'clock in
the morning, there may come other times when his head begins to nod. And
those are sure to be the times when some lynx-eyed inspector comes
slipping aboard. Biff! Bang! Pullman discipline is strict. Something has
happened to Lemuel's pay envelope, and his coffee-colored wife in West
Twenty-ninth Street will not be able to get those gray spats until they
are clean gone out of style.