An old man shuffled off the station platform onto the train and entered the car where I was sitting and reading my copy of The Christian Science Journal. He seemed nothing more than a barely moving bundle of rumpled clothing with a liquor bottle protruding from one pocket. He shuffled down the aisle past rows of empty seats and settled down beside the woman who was sitting by the window in the seat directly behind me.
Grateful that he had passed me by, I hastily, and rather perfunctorily, mentally denied the existence of drunkenness since God could not possibly create it. I then became absorbed in my magazine. A few minutes later the disheveled passenger again came to my attention through the conductor's vain attempts to collect a fare from him. With a shrug, the conductor finally moved on down the aisle, and I again perfunctorily denied that in God's kingdom there could be degradation and deterioration.
I was absorbed in an uplifting article in the Journal, when the woman behind me moved to another part of the car. Apparently the alcoholic fumes had been too much for her. I silently sympathized with her briefly, once more perfunctorily denied drunkenness, and then returned to my magazine. In a few minutes the fumes of a burning cigarette began to mingle with the fumes of alcohol, and I realized indignantly that the individual in the seat behind me was smoking in a nonsmoking car.
