Mistaken Identity

(After Mark Twain)

Years ago I arrived one day at Salamanca near New York, where I was to change trains and take the sleeper. There were a lot of people on the platform, and they were all trying to get into the long sleeper train which was already packed.

I asked the young man in the booking-office if I could have two tickets, and he answered “No!” and shut the window in my face.

I found a local official and asked him if I could have some poor little corner somewhere in a sleeping-car, but he cut me short saying: “No, you can’t, every corner is full. Now don’t trouble me any more,” and he turned his back on me and walked off.

I said to my companion, “These people talk to me like this because they don’t know who I am. If they knew…”

 

 

But my friend stopped me. “Don’t talk such nonsense,” he said, “if they knew who you are, do you think it would help you to get a vacant seat in a train which has no vacant seats in it?” That was too much.

I found the same local official and said very politely that my name was Mark Twain and… But he cut me short again: “I told you not to trouble me any more,” and again he turned his back on me. I looked around helplessly but just then the conductor came to me, his face all politeness.

“Can I help you, sir?” he said. “Will you have a place in the sleeper?” “Yes, certainly,” I said.

“We have only the big family compartment,” he continued. “Here, Tom, take these suitcases to the big family compartment.”

The porter made us comfortable in the compartment, and then said, “Now, is there anything you want, sir? Because you can have just anything you want.”

“Well. Now, that lamp is rather too high. Can I have another lamp just at the head, so that I can read comfortable?”

“Yes, sir. The lamp you want is in the next compartment. I’ll get it from there. Yes, sir, you can ask for anything you want.” And he disappeared.

Here I smiled at my companion and said, “Well, what do you say now? Didn’t their attitude change the moment they learned that I was Mark Twain?”

As I was saying this, the porter’s smiling face appeared in the doorway, and this speech followed, “Oh, sir, I recognized you the minute I set my eyes on you. I told the conductor so.”

“Is that so, my boy?” I said. “Who am I?”

“Mr. McClellan, Mayor of New York,” he said and disappeared.