Conductor, Punch in the Presence of the Passenjare!

Earlier, we were talking about pink slips, and I was reminded that there was a bit of, I don’t know, a dollgirl or a poem or verse that Mark Twain made popular, although he didn’t write it. It was originally written by a journalist by the name of Noah Brooks in New York in 1875, but Mark Twain repeated it in the Atlantic magazine.

And it really demonstrates how colored paper has been used as a way of encoding special information for a very long time. And the verse goes like this. Conductor, when you receive a fare, punch in the presence of the passenger. A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent fare. Punch in the presence of the passenger. Punch, brothers, punch with care. Punch in the presence of the passenger.

And Mark Twain’s piece in Atlantic is, he says, the verse took entire possession of me. All through breakfast, they went waltzing through my brain. I could not tell whether I’d eaten anything or not. Basically, it was an earworm. He talks the whole pieces about how these verses, he could not stop thinking about them. I was bouncing right along with you there.

He said, I fought hard for an hour, but it was useless. It’s a very funny Mark Twain piece in his usual dry style. We’ll link to it on the website. 877-929-9673.