at such distances as to convey to my ears all the discord of an inebriated band of cracked fifes and split bagpipes playing snatches of different tunes.  There were snores that beggar description, that seemed to express every temperament and every passion of the human soul.  I cannot forget one a couple of berths off, which seemed to rise above the mediocrity of snores, mellowing into a tenderness like the dying strains of an echo, and renewing its regular periods with a highbred dignity which Nature had clearly not assumed.  Another broke away from the harsh notes around in soft diapasons, and with a mellifluous soprano which I instinctively knew must belong to a throat that could sing.  Was it Nilsson?  Just over my head was a jerky croak of a snore, sounding at intervals of half a minute, as if it had retired on half-pay and longed to get back into active service.

It occurred to me, when amid these paroxysms of turmoil I heard a very fair harmony between the bass of my bedfellow and the tenor of a sleeper in the next berth, that if a Gilmore could take snores, into training, and by animal magnetism or mesmerism manage to make them snore in concert and by note—­

    In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders—­

we should have a diverting performance in sleeping-cars, and one objection to their use would be actually utilized as an extra inducement to patronize them.

Several times I was strongly impelled to shunt my bass snorer off the bed or twig his Roman nose, but one experiment of a kick roused such a vigorous snort, like that produced by dropping a brick on a sleeping pig, that I abandoned such physical means of retaliation.  I thought of tickling his nose with a feather or a straw, but the bed contained neither, and I had not even a pin.  And supposing I should stop my shelf-mate, what could I do to suppress the rest?  Should I make some horrible noise between a hoarse cough and a crow, and say, if any one complained, that it was my way of snoring?  But I thought that the object to be attained, and the possibility of being voted insane and consigned, in spite of protestation, to the baggage-car, would not compensate me for the exertion required; so I determined to submit to it like a Stoic. (Query: Would a Stoic have submitted?)

The more one meditates upon the reason of wakefulness, the more his chances of sleep diminish; and from this cause, conjoined with the peculiarity of the situation and the mood in which I found myself, I had surely “affrighted sleep” for that night.  As I lay awake I indulged in the following mental calculation of my misery to coax a slumber:  The average number of inspirations in a minute is fifteen—­remember, snoring is an act of the inspiration—­the number of hours I lay awake was six.  Fifteen snores a minute make nine hundred an hour.  Multiply 900 by 6—­the number of hours I lay awake—­and you have 5400, the number of notes struck by each snorer.  There were at least twelve distinct and regular snorers in the car.  Multiply 5400 by 12, and you have 64,800 snores, not including the snuffling neighs, perpetrated in that car from about eleven P. M. until five the next morning!