The Parlor Car

Name: The Parlor Car
Author: William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

Pages: about 26
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 28 min at 250 wpm

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From the opening

Transcribed from “The Sleeping Car and Other Farces” 1911 Houghton Mifflin Company edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
SCENE: A Parlor-Car on the New York Central Railroad. It is late afternoon in the early autumn, with a cloudy sunset threatening rain. The car is unoccupied save by a gentleman, who sits fronting one of the windows, with his feet in another chair; a newspaper lies across his lap; his hat is drawn down over his eyes, and he is apparently asleep. The rear door of the car opens, and the conductor enters with a young lady, heavily veiled, the porter coming after with her wraps and travelling-bags. The lady’s air is of mingled anxiety and desperation, with a certain fierceness of movement. She casts a careless glance over the empty chairs.
Conductor: “Here’s your ticket, madam. You can have any of the places you like here, or,”—glancing at the unconscious gentleman, and then at the young lady,—“if you prefer, you can go and take that seat in the forward car.”
Miss Lucy Galbraith: “Oh, I can’t ride backwards. I’ll stay here, please. Thank you.” The porter places her things in a chair by a window, across the car from the sleeping gentleman, and she throws herself wearily into the next seat, wheels round in it, and lifting her veil gazes absently out at the landscape. Her face, which is very pretty, with a low forehead shadowed by thick blond hair, shows the traces of tears. She makes search in her pocket for her handkerchief, which she presses to her eyes. The conductor, lingering a moment, goes out.
Porter: “I’ll be right here, at de end of de cah, if you should happen to want anything, miss,”—making a feint of arranging the shawls and satchels. “Should you like some dese things hung up? Well, dey’ll be jus’ as well in de chair. We’s pretty late dis afternoon; more’n four hours behin’ time. Ought to been into Albany ‘fore dis.

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The Parlor Car

From the opening

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