Uneasy Money by P. G. Wodehouse

Bill made his way along the swaying train to the smoking car. It had come upon him overwhelmingly that he needed tobacco. He was in the mood when a man must either smoke or give up altogether the struggle with Fate. He lit his pipe, and looked out of the window at Long Island racing past him. It was only a blur to him.

The smoking car was almost empty. Across the aisle a warm man, who had the air of having run for the train, was fanning himself with a newspaper. In the seat behind him two men had begun an earnest and wordy discussion of automobiles. An official in uniform stood beside a seatful of papers and packages. Soon, perhaps because he was an unquenchable optimist but more probably because it was his job, he would patrol the train offering for sale the peanut brittle and the road maps of Long Island which nobody ever bought. In the far corner there was something shapeless which closer inspection would have revealed as a sleeping Irishman.