Transcribed from the 1883 James R. Osgood and Company edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
THE SLEEPING CAR—A FARCE
by William D. Howells
I.
SCENE: One side of a sleeping-car on the Boston and Albany Road. The curtains are drawn before most of the berths; from the hooks and rods hang hats, bonnets, bags, bandboxes, umbrellas, and other travelling gear; on the floor are boots of both sexes, set out for THE PORTER to black. THE PORTER is making up the beds in the upper and lower berths adjoining the seats on which a young mother, slender and pretty, with a baby asleep on the seat beside her, and a stout old lady, sit confronting each other—MRS. AGNES ROBERTS and her aunt MARY.
MRS. ROBERTS. Do you always take down your back hair, aunty?
AUNT MARY. No, never, child; at least not since I had such a fright about it once, coming on from New York. It’s all well enough to take down your back hair if it is yours; but if it isn’t, your head’s the best place for it. Now, as I buy mine of Madame Pierrot—
MRS. ROBERTS. Don’t you wish she wouldn’t advertise it as human hair? It sounds so pokerish—like human flesh, you know.
AUNT MARY. Why, she couldn’t call it inhuman hair, my dear.
MRS. ROBERTS (thoughtfully). No—just hair.