usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn't been to sleep at
all;--upon which question, in the first imbecility of that
condition, I am ashamed to believe that I would have done wager by
battle with the man who sat opposite me. That opposite man had had,
through the night--as that opposite man always has--several legs too
many, and all of them too long. In addition to this unreasonable
conduct (which was only to be expected of him), he had had a pencil
and a pocket-book, and had been perpetually listening and taking
notes. It had appeared to me that these aggravating notes related
to the jolts and bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned
myself to his taking them, under a general supposition that he was
in the civil-engineering way of life, if he had not sat staring
straight over my head whenever he listened. He was a goggle-eyed
gentleman of a perplexed aspect, and his demeanour became
unbearable.

It was a cold, dead morning (the sun not being up yet), and when I
had out-watched the paling light of the fires of the iron country,
and the curtain of heavy smoke that hung at once between me and the
stars and between me and the day, I turned to my fellow-traveller
and said:

"I BEG your pardon, sir, but do you observe anything particular in
me"? For, really, he appeared to be taking down, either my
travelling-cap or my hair, with a minuteness that was a liberty.

The goggle-eyed gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as if
the back of the carriage were a hundred miles off, and said, with a
lofty look of compassion for my insignificance: