We sink down into a seat nearest the one of two doors which instinct tells us is to be opened. Again we wait an hour till the last panting victim is passed through the stile.
Then, O! it is not our door which unlocks and opens but the other. We rush for a compartment; but no! all appear filled, so we step to an official and state our case.
He conducts us on, on, nearly to the end of the train, over stones and timbers; but, at last, bestows us out of that crowd in a compartment with but three persons. Soon we leave, only two hours later than the time advertised.
For in France, little pets, the trains wait for the people. The people are locked in till all is ready; then follows a rush like a grand game of "puss, puss in the corner!" and almost always there is some poor puss who cannot get in.
Guess how many bushels of confetti rattled on the floor of our chamber that night!
[ON THE FARM IN WINTER.]
The life of a boy in winter on the old-fashioned New England farm seems to me one of the best of the right kinds of life for a healthy lad, provided his tastes have not been spoiled by wrong reading, or by some misleading glimpse of a city by gas-light. It certainly abounds with the blood and muscle-making sports for which the city physiologists so anxiously strive to substitute rinks and gymnasiums.
But I rather pity a young fellow who gets his only sleigh rides by paying a dollar an hour to the livery-stable, and who must do his skating within limits on artificial ice. He never gets even a taste of such primitive fun as two boys I know had last winter. The sleigh was at the wagon-maker's shop for repairs when the first heavy snow fell, and they harnessed Dobbin to an old boat, and had an uproarious ride up hill and down dale, with glorious bumps and jolts.