Traveling Overnight

The following account of riding in the coach overnight was in a Nevada newspaper, the Reese River Reveille, May 1869.

"In stage riding it is particularly true that it is the first night that costs. It is more intolerable than the combination of the succeeding half dozen, were the journey prolonged for a week; the breaking in is fearful, the prolongation is bearable. The air gets cold; the roads get dusty, and chokes, or rough, and alrams you; the legs become stiff and numb; the temper edges; everybody is overcome with sleep, but can't stay asleep--the struggle of contending nature racks every nerve, fires every feeling.

Everybody flounders and knocks about against everybody else in helpless despair. Perhaps the biggest man in the stage will get asleep; he voluntarily and with irresistible moment, spreads himself, legs, boots, arms and head, over the whole inside of the coach; the girls screech, the profane swear; some lady wants a smelling bottle out of her bag, and her bag is somewhere on the glknows where, but found it must be; everybody's back hair comes down, and what is nature and what is art in costume and character is revealed; and then--the hardest tiral of all--morning breaks upon the scene, and the feeling--everybody dirty, grimy, faint, "all to pieces," cross--such a disenchanting exhibition! The girl that is lovely then, the man that is gallant and serene, let them be catalogued for posterity and translated at once."

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