On the Right

Rome, March 18—Having business in Rome, I thought to go there by sleeping-car from Montreux, my wife having endorsed the conveyance as exemplary after using it a few years ago. I booked a double stateroom, inasmuch as my wife and I together with paraphernalia tend to overflow; and as we set out by car for Montreux, I thought our gesture particularly appropriate on the very day that the House of Representatives in Washington would decide the fate of supersonic travel.

We waited on the platform as a turbulent sky blackened over the still and misty lake that stretches eighty miles from Geneva to Montreux. The train pulled in dead on schedule at 1905, as they call 7:05 p.m. in these parts, and we boarded. In the bustle of bags and porters and ticket-showing, the darkness of the sleeping-car was unremarkable, but as the train slid out I light-heartedly asked the steward, who was wrestling with the bags while holding a mini-flashlight in his mouth, when ho ho would the lights go on? He mumbled, like a patient trying to communicate to his dentist, something that sounded awfully like “when we get to Rome.” He led us then to a minuscule cabin, the upper and lower bunks already made up, and heaved the bags onto the overhead rack until there was no more room, so that the last two were dumped on the floor, leaving the lower bunk to sit on provided you crouched forward at a 45 degree angle.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

Rome, March 18—Having business in Rome, I thought to go there by sleeping-car from Montreux, my wife having endorsed the conveyance as exemplary after using it a few years ago. I booked a double stateroom, inasmuch as my wife and I together with paraphernalia tend to overflow; and as we set out by car for Montreux, I thought our gesture particularly appropriate on the very day that the House of Representatives in Washington would decide the fate of supersonic travel.

We waited on the platform as a turbulent sky blackened over the still and misty lake that stretches eighty miles from Geneva to Montreux. The train pulled in dead on schedule at 1905, as they call 7:05 p.m. in these parts, and we boarded. In the bustle of bags and porters and ticket-showing, the darkness of the sleeping-car was unremarkable, but as the train slid out I light-heartedly asked the steward, who was wrestling with the bags while holding a mini-flashlight in his mouth, when ho ho would the lights go on? He mumbled, like a patient trying to communicate to his dentist, something that sounded awfully like “when we get to Rome.” He led us then to a minuscule cabin, the upper and lower bunks already made up, and heaved the bags onto the overhead rack until there was no more room, so that the last two were dumped on the floor, leaving the lower bunk to sit on provided you crouched forward at a 45 degree angle.