So completely had the eloquence of Mr. Boggs riveted the attention of the club, that they had hardly made a commencement in disposing of the beverages which had been ordered; Mr. Dropper proposed that, as Johnny Cake was not to be employed in drinking, he having ignored the proffered port wine sangaree, he should occupy their time by relating his experience. To this he expressed his willingness to accede. He stated, however, that he had been on a flying visit to Illinois since his initiation into the Elephantine order, and that he was consequently unable to furnish them with any experience of an interesting nature, in New York. But some interesting incidents had occurred on a railroad train, which he had undertaken to note down, with the view of reading to the club.
Mr. Johnny Cake here produced a roll of manuscripts, which, after he had straightened up his collar, he proceeded to read. The manuscript read as follows:--
"I do not propose, now, to give you a glimpse of anything within the city. In fact, it is my intention to inflict upon you an extra-metropolitan scene, which I recently witnessed, and which, though funny, was not comfortable, and I don't care about experiencing it again."
The section of country to which your attention is called was flat--positively flat--comparatively stale, and superlatively unprofitable. It was a western prairie marsh, the home of gigantic frogs, the abiding place of water-snakes and musk-rats; where flourished in luxuriant profusion, bulrushes, water-cresses, pond-lilies, and such like amphibious and un-get-at-able vegetables. Through that particular locality a train of cars was not only seen, but heard going at 2'40" speed over a pile-bridge, made across a Michigan swamp, by driving black-oak logs end-wise into the mud. The people therein were covered with dust, as thickly as if each man had been a locomoting Pompeii, each woman a perambulating Herculaneum, and some vagrant Vesuvius had been showering ashes on them all for a month. They were lying about loose in the cars, after the ordinary fashion of people on a tedious railway journey; curled up in some such ungraceful and uneasy positions as the tired beasts of a strolling menagerie probably assume in their cages during their forced marches across the country. To carry out the parallel, the conductor came along at irregular intervals, and with deliberate and premeditated malignity, stirred up the passengers, as if they were actually animals on exhibition, and he really was their keeper, and wanted to make them growl. And this conductor, in common with conductors in general, deserves notice for the diabolical ingenuity which he displayed in forcing from his helpless victims the greatest number of growls in a limited space of time.