University of Virginia Library

Our own unfolds another coil
Of his portentous tale,
And shows the torture and the toil
Of riding on a rail.

I left East Haddam by the train—a mode of torture worse
Than any Dante conjured up—the case I will rehearse:
I found the car, then, occupied (I got in rather late,
And 'twas hermetically closed) by victims fifty-eight,
Each one of whom looked headachy and parboiledy and pale,
Having less air a-piece, perhaps, than Jonah in his whale;
They seemed a troop of convict souls let out in search of bail
And, lest they might a mouthful get of unbedevilled air,
A Stygian sheriff's officer went with them every where,
Whose duty was to see that they no atmosphere should know
Cooler than that which Minos' tail had doomed them to below:
In shape he seemed a kind of stove, but by degrees my head
Was squeezed into an iron cap and screwed till I was dead
(Or thought I was), and then there came strange lights into my brain,
And 'neath his thin sheet-iron mask the tipstaff imp was plain.
At intervals another fiend—by mortals Brakeman hight—
Would rouse his fellow-torturer into a fierce delight,
Punching his ribs, and feeding him with lumps of anthracite;
The demon's single eye grew red, and with unholy glee
Exulted as it shrivelled up the very soul in me.
I would have shrieked a maniac shriek, but that I did not dare;
I thought of turning madly round, and seizing by the hair
A soul unblest that sat by me, only somehow I got
A notion that his treacherous scalp would prove to be red-hot.
I sprang to raise the window, but a female spirit of ill
Who all the space around her soured, sharp-nosed, close-lipped, and still,
(A vinegar-cruet incarnate) said, “No gentleman would place
A lady in a thorough-draught that had a swollen face!”
If you have ever chanced to bite a nice unripe persimmon,
You'll have some notion of her tone, but still a faint and dim one
No patent stove can radiate a chill more like the pole
Than such a lady, whose each act true views of grace control,
In doubt about her bonnet-box, secure about her soul.
Thenceforward all is phantasm dire; I dimly recollect
A something 'twixt a nose and voice that said “'most there, I 'xpect,”—
Heavens! almost WHERE? a pang, a flash of fire through either eye shoots,
And I looked momently to see the last scene of Der Frieschutz;
The bland conductor will become that flame-clad individual
Who stamping, Earth will gape, and “Gentlemen, I bid you all,”
He'll shriek, “to lava tea at six,” then crashing through the floor
With a strong smell of brimstone,—but all swam, I saw no more,
Only I vaguely seem to have seen the attendant fiend excite
His principal with further pokes and lumps of anthracite,
While faces featureless as dough, looked on serene and placid,
And nine and fifty pairs of lungs evolved carbonic acid.
There was a scream, but whether 'twas the engine, or the last
Wild prayer for mercy of those eight and fifty as they passed
Down to their several torturings in deepest Malebolge,
As I myself am still in doubt, can't certainly be told ye;
I only know they vanished all, the silent ghastly crew,
But whither, how, why, when,—these things I never fully knew;
I stood with carpet-bag in hand, when the strange spell unbound me.
And five score yelling cabmen danced their frenzied war-dance round me.