MARK TWAIN
his courting before marriage must have seemed so pale
and poor and la/.y compared with hers after it. Yes there
was that same old gushy, sappy little drama going on
before me, just in the same old soul-enchanting way with-
out a change in any detail of the performance. But at last
the bride tired herself out as usual, and then, as usual
she cushioned her dear head under his left ear and went
to sleep as contentedly as if she had been in heaven—and
it's a mighty trying position for the other fellow, and
makes him feel bitterly conspicuous. But now a change
came—the first I had ever observed in this drama—for
she began to snore. It was an immense improvement and
softened your hard heart toward her at once, because it
showed that her sleep was honest and not gotten up for
effect, as those former sleeps were. So I gratefully added
that to the long list of improvements which I had noticed
in these six weeks of railroading.
Lots of things have changed and all for the better. They
have dry towels in the hotels now, instead of the pulpy-
damp rag of former days, which shuddered you up like a
cold poultice; and they have electrical buttons, now, in-
stead of those crooked bell handles which always tore
your hand and made you break a lot of the command-
ments—all you could think of on a sudden call that way;
and at table they feed you like a man and a brother, and
don't bring your dinner and spread it around your plate
in a mass-meeting of soap-dishes; and you have the tele-
phone instead of the petrified messenger boy. And then
the new light. There was nothing like it when I was on
the highway before. I was in Detroit last night and for
the first time saw a city where the night was as beautiful
as the day; saw for the first time the place of sallow twi-
light, bought at $3 a thousand feet, clusters of corruscating
electric suns floating in the sky, without visible support
and casting a mellow radiance upon the snow-covered
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