In Europe the Herr Director travels second class when he travels officially (the first, as is well known, being reserved for Americans and fools), and third when he travels _incognito_, for he is a thrifty soul. Nevertheless, he did not like our cars, they were "obtrusively decorated," and privacy was impossible. Why should he have to look at a hundred or more human heads variously "_frisired_"?
I suggested that we take seats in front, which we succeeded in doing, and then he found that if he wished to take off his collar, he would have to do it with two hundred or more human eyes fastened upon him, when the hundred people possessing them had no business to see what he was doing.
I have already confessed how sensitive I am to criticism of anything American, no matter how just the criticism may be. So sensitive am I, that had he reflected upon the good looks of my wife, he could scarcely have hurt me more than when he reflected upon the beauty and arrangement of an American railway car.
And yet I have often wondered why our American genius seems to have exhausted itself when it evolved the present type of car, having done nothing to it except adding or taking away some of its "gingerbread." Nevertheless I lost my patience and told him that if he liked to travel cooped in with seven other passengers, four of whom he must face and two of whom might at any moment poke their elbows into his ribs; if he preferred to breathe air polluted by seven other people, and have a fresh supply of ozone only at periods and in quantities regulated by law, I did not admire his taste. As far as I was concerned I preferred to travel in this big room on wheels, rather than in a jail-like box to which the conductor alone had the key. Anyway this represented American democracy with its unpartitioned space; but if he really wanted it, I could get him a stateroom in the Pullman, and he could ride in isolated splendor and be aristocratically stuffy and uncomfortable.
When the Frau Directorin in typical German phraseology complained about the draft: "_Um Gottes Willen ein Zug!_" I decided to save the day, and we retreated to the Pullman stateroom.
There they rested themselves back and looked tolerably happy while I, silently but fervently, prayed that this particular train would not disgrace itself by "committing" an accident.