You mind your own business, all
of you. I don't want a lot of old fools telling me what to do. I
know what I'm about."
What can be expected from such a train? The chances are that it
comes to a bad end. I expect it is recognised afterwards, a broken-
down, unloved, friendless, old train, wandering aimless and despised
in some far-off country, musing with bitter regret upon the day
when, full of foolish pride and ambition, it started from Munich,
with its boiler nicely oiled, at 1.45.
B. abandons this 1.45 as hopeless and incorrigible, and continues
his search.
"Hulloa! what's this?" he exclaims. "How will this do us? Leaves
Munich at 4, gets to Heidelberg 4.15. That's quick work. Something
wrong there. That won't do. You can't get from Munich to
Heidelberg in a quarter of an hour. Oh! I see it. That 4 o'clock
goes to Brussels, and then on to Heidelberg afterwards. Gets in
there at 4.15 to-morrow, I suppose. I wonder why it goes round by
Brussels, though? Then it seems to stop at Prague for ever so long.
Oh, damn this timetable!"
Then he finds another train that starts at 2.15, and seems to be an
ideal train. He gets quite enthusiastic over this train.
"This is the train for us, old man," he says. "This is a splendid
train, really. It doesn't stop anywhere."
"Does it GET anywhere?" I ask.
"Of course it gets somewhere," he replies indignantly. "It's an
express! Munich," he murmurs, tracing its course through the
timetable, "depart 2.15. First and second class only. Nuremberg?
No; it doesn't stop at Nuremberg. Wurtzburg? No. Frankfort for
Strasburg? No. Cologne, Antwerp, Calais? Well, where does it
stop? Confound it! it must stop somewhere. Berlin, Paris,
Brussels, Copenhagen? No. Upon my soul, this is another train that
does not go anywhere! It starts from Munich at 2.15, and that's
all. It doesn't do anything else."
It seems to be a habit of Munich trains to start off in this
purposeless way. Apparently, their sole object is to get away from
the town. They don't care where they go to; they don't care what
becomes of them, so long as they escape from Munich.
"For heaven's sake," they say to themselves, "let us get away from
this place. Don't let us bother about where we shall go; we can
decide that when we are once fairly outside. Let's get out of
Munich; that's the great thing."
B. begins to grow quite frightened. He says:
"We shall never be able to leave this city. There are no trains out
of Munich at all. It's a plot to keep us here, that's what it is.
We shall never be able to get away. We shall never see dear old
England again!"
I try to cheer him up by suggesting that perhaps it is the custom in
Bavaria to leave the destination of the train to the taste and fancy
of the passengers.
