The train is going at the rate of thirty miles an hour, the express
speed in Germany, and a bridge comes in sight crossing over the
line. On seeing this bridge, the guard, holding on by the window,
leans his body as far back as ever it will go. You look at him, and
then at the rapidly-nearing bridge, and calculate that the arch will
just take his head off without injuring any other part of him
whatever, and you wonder whether the head will be jerked into the
carriage or will fall outside.
When he is three inches off the bridge, he pulls himself up
straight, and the brickwork, as the train dashes through, kills a
fly that was trespassing on the upper part of his right ear.
Then, when the bridge is passed, and the train is skirting the very
edge of a precipice, so that a stone dropped just outside the window
would tumble straight down 300 feet, he suddenly lets go, and,
balancing himself on the foot-board without holding on to anything,
commences to dance a sort of Teutonic cellar-flap, and to warm his
body by flinging his arms about in the manner of cabmen on a cold
day.
The first essential to comfortable railway travelling in Germany is
to make up your mind not to care a rap whether the guard gets killed
in the course of the journey or not. Any tender feeling towards the
guard makes railway travelling in the Fatherland a simple torture.
At five a.m. (how fair and sweet and fresh the earth looks in the
early morning! Those lazy people who lie in bed till eight or nine
miss half the beauty of the day, if they but knew it. It is only we
who rise early that really enjoy Nature properly) I gave up trying
to get to sleep, and made my way to the dressing-room at the end of
the car, and had a wash.
It is difficult to wash in these little places, because the cars
shake so; and when you have got both your hands and half your head
in the basin, and are unable to protect yourself, the sides of the
room, and the water-tap and the soap-dish, and other cowardly
things, take a mean advantage of your helplessness to punch you as
hard as ever they can; and when you back away from these, the door
swings open and slaps you from behind.
I succeeded, however, in getting myself fairly wet all over, even if
I did nothing else, and then I looked about for a towel. Of course,
there was no towel. That is the trick.
