“Wo gehen Sie hin?” shrieked the first to reach me.
“Ich gehe nach Weimar.”
“Aber, the train to Weimar is gone!” shouted the second officer.
As I had a hand on the carriage door, I made so bold as to deny the assertion.
“Aber, ja, er ist fort!” gasped the sergeant who brought up the rear of the constabulary deluge. “It is gone! The guard has already said ‘all aboard.’”
The train stood at the edge of the platform long enough to have emptied and filled again; but, as it was gone ten minutes before it started, I was forced to wait for the next one at ten-thirty.
The fourth-class carriage, unlike other European cars, was built on the American plan, with a door at each end. In reality it was nothing more than a box car with wooden benches around the sides and a few apologies for windows. Almost before we were under way, the most unkempt couple aboard stood up and turned loose what they evidently thought was a song. Many of the passengers seemed to be victims of the same auricular illusion, for the pair gleaned a handful of Pfennige before descending at the first station. The bawl of cracked voices, however, was but a prelude to worse visitations, for, as no train man enters the cars while they are in motion, fourth-class travelers are the prey of every grafter who chooses to inflict himself upon them.
We stopped at a station at least every four miles during that day’s journey. At the first hamlet beyond Frankfurt the car slowly filled with peasants and laborers in heavy boots and rough smocks, who carried sundry farm implements ranging from pitchforks to young plows. Sunburned women, on whose backs were strapped huge baskets stuffed with every product of the countryside from cabbages to babies, packed into the center of the car, turned their backs upon those of us who occupied the benches, and serenely leaned themselves and their loads against us. The carriage filled at last to its utmost limits, and its capacity passed belief, a guard outside closed the heavy door with a bang, and uttered a mighty shout of “Vorsicht”! (look out), evidently to inform those near the portal that they were lucky to have “looked out” before it was slammed. The station master on the platform, a man boasting a uniform no American rear-admiral could afford, or dare to appear in, raised a hunting-horn to his lips and gave as a signal of departure such a blast as echoed through the ravines of Roncesvalles. The head-guard drew his whistle and shrilly seconded the command of his superior. The engineer whistled back to inform the guard that he was ready to do his duty. The guard repeated his sibilant order. The driver liberated another pent-up shriek to show how easily his engine could reach high C, or to imply that he was fast nerving himself up to open the throttle; the man on the platform whistled again to cheer him on; a heroic squeal came from the cab in answer; and, with a jerk that sent peasants, baskets, farm-tools, lime-pails, cabbages, and babies into a conglomerate, struggling mass at the back end of the car, we were off. To celebrate which auspicious event the engineer emitted a final shriek and gave a second yank, lest some sure-footed individual had by any chance retained his equilibrium.
By the time some semblance of order had been restored, unwieldy peasant women pulled out of the clawing miscellany and stood right end up, cabbages and babies restored to their proper baskets, pitchforks and smocks disentangled, the next station was reached and a sudden stop undid all our efforts, this time stacking the passengers at the front end. Some minutes after the train had come to a standstill, when long-distance travelers had lost all hope of relief from the sweltering congestion, the countrymen began slowly to wander out at the doors. The exodus continued until there remained in the car only those few through-passengers, who, utterly cowed and subjugated, shrank back on the benches to escape attention. Then the vanguard of another multitude, bound for a village some three miles distant, made its appearance and history repeated itself.
There were times, too, during the journey when the villages were apparently too far apart to suit the engine-driver. For occasionally, soon after having run through his entire repertoire of toots, he suddenly, remarkably suddenly in fact, brought the engine to a halt in the open country. But as German railway laws forbid voyagers to step out, crawl out, or peep out of the car under such circumstances without a special permit from the guard, countersigned under seal by the head-guard, there was no means of learning whether the engineer had lost his courage or merely caught sight of a wild flower that particularly took his fancy.