A mere single third to the next
station would gladden him sufficiently in most cases; but if the
poor fellow appeared very woe-begone, and as if he wanted more than
ordinary cheering up, we got him a second-class return.
For the purpose of our journey to Ober-Ammergau and back, we each
carried with us a folio containing some ten or twelve first-class
tickets between different towns, covering in all a distance of some
thousand miles; and one afternoon, at Munich, seeing a railway
official, a cloak-room keeper, who they told us had lately lost his
aunt, and who looked exceptionally dejected, I proposed to B. that
we should take this man into a quiet corner, and both of us show him
all our tickets at once - the whole twenty or twenty-four of them -
and let him take them in his hand and look at them for as long as he
liked. I wanted to comfort him.
B., however, advised against the suggestion. He said that even if
it did not turn the man's head (and it was more than probable that
it would), so much jealousy would be created against him among the
other railway people throughout Germany, that his life would be made
a misery to him.
So we bought and showed him a first-class return to the next station
but one; and it was quite pathetic to watch the poor fellow's face
brighten up at the sight, and to see the faint smile creep back to
the lips from which it had so long been absent.
