WHEN SMITH SNORED

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 11998, 21 February 1903, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHEN SMITH SNORED

(By.W. L. ALDEN, in " Xo-D.ay.")

" One night Smith was a passenger on, the St. Paul and Milwaukee Road, and 3ie had a berth in one of the old-style corridor sleeping cars. In the berth albove him was a man who was perfectly quiet when Smith went to bed, and for once Smit'h thought that lie \va.s in luck, and was going to have ;i quiet night. After a while, however, Smith woke up, and the man overhead was snoring worse than _a donkey brays. It was, as Smith always maintained, the loudest and most aggravating snore that he had ever struck. Well! Smith, stood it for a, while, and then he got desperate. He got up and went into the lavatory for s-oaip, and tilled the. man"s mouth chock-full of old Brown Windsor. This woke the man up, and after he got his mouth clean: lie began, to abuse Smith.

'•'l done it,' says Smith, 'because you are the most intolerable, everlasting, woiid-without-eiid snorer that ever travelled on any railroad.' " ' I like that,' said the man, ' considering that for snoring you'd beat Sol Gibbons, who is considered the champion; snorer at the North-West, and once snored the plaster off the ceiling of his hotel room. Why, you miserable hypocrite ! You kept me awake the best part of an hour, this very night, with your infernal snoring.' " With thait Smith jumps up, and says that he never snored l in the whole course of his life, and that no man can call him a. snorer without paying for it. So Smith grabbed the man by the collar of his night-shirt, and started in to drag him out on to the floor. The man wasn't libit frightened, aind he tumbled out of Ins own accord, and he and Smith had it hot and heavy in the corridor until they woke up the whole car, and everybody climbed out of their berths to s ee what had broke, loose. " When the passengers got to understand what was the matter, they were for putting both men off the train, but an old, benevolent-looking gentleman says: ' Gentlemen,—Don't let us do an injustice to any man. Let us appoint a committee to listen to the snoring of these two men, and to decide which is the worse of the two. We will then put the worst off the train, and gag the ether man's nose, and mouth.' 'This proposal was unanimously approved and the •onimittee ordered Smith

and liis antagonist to- get back to their berths, and begin a snoring- match. Erervbody was mightily interested in the restslr, and they say that there was some b. s betting. Smith being rather the favourite'' Ic took some little time for the men to get to work, but as thev weie tired in consequence of their argument in the corridor . they fell asleep in spite of themselves. and both started in to within a minute of one another. At first, the man in the upper berth seemed to have a little the b-st of the contest, tor he bc-jau with a chokv xort of snore—the kind that gets worse and worse, until you really have hopes that the man is choking to death, and then it ends m one tremendous- brarr, and begins all over again. I know that snore well. and several times I've waked up the man who was making it. and asked him to ~o out and choke to death in the corridor. but- m point of fact no saorer ever vet choked m consequence of snorin- Well' as I s,ud the man in the upper berth started ' ? V™* n ?? S mith settled down into a steady, booming snore, that everyone of tne committee acknowledged laid ow'arv. tnmg they had ever heard for volume and depth of tone. They gave both men every cWe to win, but after half-an-honr bv the chairman's watch, it was agreed that Mmth had triumphantly, and that no an7£= : K " US b * «»o Ui jh- to hold him and hi s snore.

"•They pnt Smi:h off at the n «t station, and tied down the other mans mouth and nose.