AN AMOROUS WESTERN YOUTH.
A young Montana chap upon stepping aboard of a sleeping-car thus addressed the conductor:
“See here, captain, I want one of your best bunks for this young woman, and one for myself individually. One will do for us when we get to the Bluff,—hey, Mariar?” (Here he gave a playful poke at “Mariar,” to which she replied, “Now, John, quit.”) “For, you see, we’re goin’ to git married at Mariar’s uncle’s. We might ’a bin married at Montanny, but we took a habit to wait till we got to the Bluff, bein’ Mariar’s uncle is a minister, and they charge a goshfired price for hitchin’ folks at Montanny.”
“Mariar” was assigned to one of the best “bunks.” During a stoppage of the train at a station, the voice of John was heard in pleading accents, unconscious that the train had stopped, and that his tones could be heard throughout the car:
“Now, Mariar, you might give a feller jes one.”
“John, you quit, or I’ll git out right here, and hoof it back to Montanny in the snow-storm.”
“Only one little kiss, Mariar, and I hope to die if I don’t——”
“John——!”
At this moment an old gray-beard poked his head out of his berth, at the other end of the car, and cried out,
“Maria, for pity’s sake, give John one kiss, so that we can go to sleep sometime to-night!”
Thereupon John subsided, and retired to his berth to dream of the distinction between the hesitancy of the kiss of courtship and the freedom of the kiss connubial.
