But that matters as little on fairy railroads as elsewhere. When the boys looked up they saw that the voice came from a policeman, about as tall as a three-storey house, and no thicker than a Maypole, standing with his arms sticking straight out, and who had an extra eye to safety, blazing red, both in front and at the back of his head. Just as they looked up, one arm flopped down to a slant, and an eye winked funnily from red to green, so that he was a caution to look at. The train now appeared dashing out of the tunnel (golden and bright no longer), going so fast that the boys thought it must pass the station, and were horrified when they saw the porters busily throwing down a quantity of black things like two-foot-long tadpoles on to the rails, and then, a little further on, a big, round, black ball.
STOP THESE BUFFERS.
“What’s that for?” said Jaques.
“Well, them’s stops. We goes about as fast as thought, so we checks and pulls our trains up the same way as they do trains of thought, with commas and colons.”
And sure enough the train, after crashing through the commas, came to a stand just as two funny little buffers, whose heads stuck out in front of the engine, seemed on the point of being black-balled by the full stop. It is true that the commas seemed not to be placed with any care, but just dropped down on the lines anyhow; still in this the system varied in no way from the mode in which commas are scattered about the lines of other great works as well as railways. In fact it seems to be the rule, that commas come as they like; and if they come upside down they can bring any amount of material to one work from another—a new proof that one of the greatest powers of the age is commars.
A BLOWING UP.
As the train came to a standstill, the policeman’s eye winked suddenly back from green to red, and his arm flew up again, while he shouted—
“Smash’ll, smash’ll, smash’ll.”
“Change furcrotnchipucklgublboranquklin;”
by which he meant, “Change for Crowtown, Cheepcackle, Gobbleboro’, and Quackland.”