“Is it French coffee?” I asked.
“No, it’s Kentucky corn juice. Try some?”
“No, I thank you. I always begin the day with a drink of pure water.”
“And end it with a drink of pure whiskey, eh? I commence with water too, but I can’t take it pure before breakfast.”
After taking a stomachful of equal parts of whiskey and water, he warmed up and became talkative. He told me he had boarded the train at midnight and had awaked in the morning at the same place from which he had started. He said the train had held its own and hadn’t drifted any, and that he had known it wouldn’t; but he had engaged his berth to sleep in and was going to fulfill his part of the contract like a law-abiding citizen.
I told him that this delay was only one of many mishaps that had befallen me, that I had experienced nothing but delays since I had left home six weeks before, and would arrive there nearly a week behind time. I had been singularly unfortunate.
“Young man!” he exclaimed in a startling, sepulchral voice that quivered slightly, like that of an orator giving a cue to the emotion he is about to evoke. “Young man, you don’t know what you are talking about.”
“You’re right,” I answered; “I have had insomnia since six o’clock this morning, and my bearings are a little bit off. I never complain of real troubles, for they are blessings in disguise. They are good for us. Fancied troubles are the blighting ones.”
“Suppose that you had been kept away from your home on account of your health for three months, and were now called home to a dying wife, and couldn’t make any better progress than I have since I started last night? You don’t know what real troubles are, young man.”
Here he took another drink of his poison and I expressed as much sympathy as I could, considering the novelty of the exhibition, and started out in search of my poison, viz., café-au-lait.