Double Trouble | Page 3

the judge, "and was blushing. Mrs. Hunter was explaining the new style in ladies' figures, and asking him if he didn't think Minnie was getting much plumper. As soon as he saw me he yelled: 'Hello, Blodgett! Come into the buffet! I want to see you about some legal matters.' He excused himself to the ladies, and we went into the buffet."
"What legal matters did he place before you?" said his interlocutor.
"Two bottles of beer," said the judge, "and a box of cigars. Then he talked Browning to me until 9:03, when he got off at Elm Springs Junction, to take the Limited north. He was wrong on Browning, but otherwise all right."
It was, therefore, at 9:03, or 9:05 (for the engineer's report showed the train two minutes late out of Elm Springs Junction), that Florian Amidon became the sole occupant of this remote country railway platform. He sat on a trunkful of photographer's supplies, with a suit-case and a leather bag at his back. It was the evening of June twenty-seventh, 1896. All about the lonely station the trees crowded down to the right of way, and rustled in a gentle evening breeze. Somewhere off in the wood, his ear discerned the faint hoot of an owl. Across the track in a pool under the shadow of the semaphore, he heard the full orchestra of the frogs, and saw reflected in the water the last exquisite glories of expiring day lamped by one bright star. Leaning back, he partly closed his eyelids, and wondered why so many rays came from the star--with the vague wonder of drowsiness, which comes because it has been in the habit of coming from one's earliest childhood. The star divided into two, and all its beams swam about while his gaze remained fixed, and nothing seemed quite in the focus of his vision.
Putting out his hand, presently, he touched a window, damp with vapor and very cold. On the other side he felt a coarse curtain, and where the semaphore stood, appeared a perpendicular bar of dim light. A vibratory sound somewhere near made him think that the owls and frogs had begun snoring. He heard horrible hissings and the distant clangor of a bell; and then all the platform heaved and quaked under him as if it were being dragged off into the woods. He sprang upward, received a blow upon his head, rolled off to the floor, and----
Stood in the middle of a sleeping-car, clad only in pajamas; and a scholarly-looking negro porter looked down in his face, laying gentle hands upon him, and addressing him in soothing tones.
"Huht yo' haid, Mr. Brassfield? Kind o' dreamin', wasn't yo', suh?" said the porter. "Bettah tuhn in again, suh. I'll wake yo' fo' N'Yohk. Yo' kin sleep late on account of the snow holdin' us back. Jes' lay down, Mr. Brassfield; it's only 3:35."
A lady's eye peeped forth from the curtain of a near-by berth, and vanished instantly. Mr. Amidon, seeing it, plunged back into the shelter from which he had tumbled, and lay there trembling--trembling, forsooth, because, instead of summer, it seemed winter; for Elm Springs Junction, it appeared to be a moving train on some unknown road, going God knew where; and for Florian Amidon, in his outing suit, it had the appearance of a somnambulistic wretch in his night-clothes, who was addressed by the unfamiliar porter as Mr. Brassfield!

[1] Editorial Note: As reflecting light on the personal characteristics of Mr. Florian Amidon, whose remarkable history is the turning-point of this narrative, we append a brief note by his college classmate and lifelong acquaintance, the well-known Doctor J. Galen Urquhart, of Hazelhurst, Wisconsin. The note follows:
"At the time when the following story opens, Mr. Florian Amidon was about thirty years of age. Height, five feet ten and three-quarters inches; weight, one hundred and seventy-eight pounds. For general constitutional and pathological facts, see Sheets 2 to 7, inclusive, attached hereto. Subject well educated, having achieved distinction in linguistic, philological and literary studies in his university. (See Sheet 1, attached.) Neurologically considered, family history of subject (see Sheets 8 and 10) shows nothing abnormal, except that his father, a chemist, wrote an essay opposing the atomic theory, and a cousin is an epileptic. I regard these facts as significant. Volitional and inhibitory faculties largely developed; may be said to be a man of strong will-power end self-control. The following facts may be noted as possibly symptomatic of neurasthenia; fondness for the poetry of Whitman and Browning (see Nordau); tendency to dabble in irregular systems of medical practice; pronounced nervous and emotional irritability during adolescence; aversion to young women in society; stubborn clinging to celibacy. In posture, gait and general movements, the following may be noted: vivacious in conversation; possessed of great mobility of facial