A Baby Passenger (1899)

Abstract

One night we were journeying in the west of the Rockies over a road bed which threatened to jerk out our teeth with every loosely-laid sleeper on the line. Traveling in that part of the world, certainly in the days I speak of, was pretty hard. The travelers were mostly men, all overworked, all overanxious, and intolerant of anything which hindered their work or interfered with the measure of their repose. In night journeys the berths in the sleeping cars were made up early, and as all the night trains were sleeping cars, the only thing to be done was to turn in at once and try and sleep away the time. As most of the men were usually tired out with the day’s work, the arrangement suited everybody. You can understand that on such journeys women and children were disturbing elements.

This short story is reprinted from the earliest American edition I have been able to locate, the Daily Iowa State Press [Iowa City] 1, no. 175 (April 26, 1899): no pagination. A British edition predating the American edition appeared in Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper [London] (February 19, 1899): 17. However, the latter edition, although “first,” resembles more its much later off-shoot, “Chin Music,” which Stoker publishes in Snowbound: The Record of a Theatrical Touring Party (London: Collier & Co., 1908), whereas the American edition includes extended passages not present in the British edition or “Chin Music,” and it is the more prolific of the two, appearing in multiple newspapers across not only the United States but Australia and New Zealand as well. Thus have I chosen to reprint it in lieu of the British version.