LUNCH TICKET
Comfort while traveling

The Sleeping Car Company announces that it is prepared to introduce various improvements to the comfort already enjoyed by the traveler forced to spend the night on the railway. Among other things, we are told about the adoption of the Pullmann.
The Pullmann, which is the American sleeping car, I have just experienced more than one sample over five days and five nights, between Mexico and New York. I don't know if it presents any advantages in terms of strength or economy for the operator. But for the exploited, I mean for the consumer, I will allow myself to raise a timid protest. It is much less comfortable than our sleeping car in France. Its worst fault is promiscuity. While our sleeping cars are divided into well-closed rooms, with a bathroom, the American Pullmann is a large dormitory, where sleepers are only isolated by curtains. You have to undress on your bed, which is really not easy, and to reach the men's toilet at one end, or the women's toilet at the other end, you have to cross the entire line of beds. In America, where respect for women is admirable, a young miss, in soft-colored pajamas and with her hair down her back, can accomplish this little journey evening and morning without any gentleman even raising his eyes to stare at her.
In Europe we have not yet reached this degree of civilization, and the ardor of Latin blood will perhaps always oppose it. It follows that a Pullmann of the type used in the United States, common to both sexes, would be inconvenient for female travelers. Moreover, even between men, the omnibus toilet at the end of the carriage only allows washing their hands and faces. It's really a bit sketchy. On the other hand, I will sing the praises of the dining car, which is more pleasant than our restaurant cars, because you eat à la carte there. The American diner has the choice between a fairly large number of fish, meats, vegetables, fruits and pastries. He is not forced, like at home, to eat a table d'hôte dinner, monotonous and obligatory. He is freed from the eternal “roast veal”. He can also eat at whatever time he likes. This à la carte, all-hours cuisine obviously presupposes certain service complications, but since the American railways have resolved this difficulty, I don't see why ours would be less ingenious. If I had my say in the powerful Sleeping Car Company, otherwise so worthy of praise, it is not the inconvenient Pullmann dormitory that I would ask to see introduced on our European lines, but the à la carte dining car restaurant. We are better lying down than they are there; but they eat better than us.

Maurice de Waleffe