Call themselves - people of my own flesh and blood - have thanked
them and taken it in again!
I have kicked it into a dozen pieces, and kicked the pieces all the
way downstairs and out into the garden, and persons - persons, mind
you, who will not sew a button on the back of my shirt to save me
from madness - have collected the pieces and stitched them carefully
together, and made the book look as good as new, and put it back in
my study!
It has acquired the secret of perpetual youth, has this time-table.
Other time-tables that I buy become dissipated-looking wrecks in
about a week. This book looks as fresh and new and clean as it did
on the day when it first lured me into purchasing it. There is
nothing about its appearance to suggest to the casual observer that
it is not this month's Bradshaw. Its evident aim and object in life
is to deceive people into the idea that it is this month's Bradshaw.
It is undermining my moral character, this book is. It is
responsible for at least ten per cent. of the bad language that I
use every year. It leads me into drink and gambling. I am
continually finding myself with some three or four hours to wait at
dismal provincial railway stations. I read all the advertisements
on both platforms, and then I get wild and reckless, and plunge into
the railway hotel and play billiards with the landlord for threes of
Scotch.
I intend to have that Bradshaw put into my coffin with me when I am
buried, so that I can show it to the recording angel and explain
matters. I expect to obtain a discount of at least five-and-twenty
per cent. off my bill of crimes for that Bradshaw.
The 3.10 train in the morning was, of course, too late for us. It
would not get us to Ober-Ammergau until about 9 a.m. There was a
train leaving at 7.30 (I let B. find out this) by which we might
reach the village some time during the night, if only we could get a
conveyance from Oberau, the nearest railway-station. Accordingly,
we telegraphed to Cook's agent, who was at Ober-Ammergau (we all of
us sneer at Mr. Cook and Mr. Gaze, and such-like gentlemen, who
kindly conduct travellers that cannot conduct themselves properly,
when we are at home; but I notice most of us appeal, on the quiet,
to one or the other of them the moment we want to move abroad), to
try and send a carriage to meet us by that train; and then went to
an hotel, and turned into bed until it was time to start.
