“There’s no necessity for it,” bawled a fourth.
“It’s packing us like negroes,” said a fifth.
“It’s the ne plus ultra of mismanagement,” said a sixth.
Those who tried to do it always found that they got on somebody else’s knee instead of on their own, which, as it turned out, came to much the same thing, as the moment anybody rose to try to sit down on his own knee, a Sillybillier popped down on his seat.
WISIBLY SWELLIN’.
There was no need for hurry, as the train was only 22 hours and 49 minutes behind time; so, after everybody had with great difficulty got in, and they were packed so tight that the sides of the carriages were bulging out, the station-bell rang for 19 minutes, to show that the train was going to start. Then the guard unscrewed his whistle-nose, wiped it carefully with his pocket-handkerchief, and screwed it on again. It so happened that he fastened it with the wrong end out; and when he blew, he only whistled into himself, so that the driver could not hear; and he had to get the station-master to give him a slap on the back with one of the big tickets, to make the whistling that had stuck in him come out. The train then started, but as there was a bridge just beyond the station, and the carriages were so swelled, it had to be stopped again till the porters had roped the carriages like trunks, to press the sides in and let them pass.
FREE AND EASY.
The process made things so tight, that several persons called out, “Oh dear!” At this the porters only laughed, and said, “Dear? it’s the cheapest thing you get in twenty-four hours—you get it for nothing.”