After the trunks were all passed Pop asked a man where the baggage car was and that man couldn't speak English either. He asked Pop what, and Pop says again where's the baggage car, and just then an American that had been over before says to the man he means the luggage van, and the man said oh wy didn't ee si so. Pop says he thinks that's Welsh, which is a language he never liked anyhow. The only welsh thing he ever liked was a rabbit, he said. Wots your name asked the Baggage man. Drake, says Pop. Well your van is the seventh car up. It's marked with a D. Do you know a D when you see it? Pop said he guessed so. He'd seen one once and he had an idea that it looked like a P without a pedestal or a B cut in two. That's it, said the man. Well you put your luggage in the van marked with a P without a pedestal and when you get to London you can go and claim it. But suppose somebody else claims it said Pop. That's his affair and yours not mine says the man and he walked off. Then Pop found out that they don't give checks over here, and he said he guessed the reason was that they preferred cash.
After we got our trunks on board Pop took me up to see the engine and you never saw such an engine anywhere outside of a toy-store. It looked awful small and it only had a little platform at the back for the engineer to stand in. Pop says the railroads can't afford to furnish cabs for its engineers. The smoke-stack looked just like a piece of pipe sticking up in front of the boiler and there wasn't a cow-catcher in sight, but it had a bully whistle. It was one of those raspy whistles that makes old people nervous and boys laugh. Pop says a whistle like that makes a cow-catcher unnecessary because a cow is a quiet sort of an animal and likes to chew its gum in peace, hating noise; and anyhow the English people aren't bothering much about catching cows when there's so many Americans travelling about with money in their pockets to be caught; and I guess he's right because most everybody here goes around holding his hand out. Chesterfield told me it would be that way so I wasn't surprised. He said when you land every hand on the dock will be stretched out to you but it isn't to welcome you, don't think that. It's to relieve you of your surplus. I asked him what a surplus was, and he said it was a collection of rare coins that you didn't need in your business and when I said I wasn't any wiser than before he said a surplus was the money you had in your pocket to spend on things you didn't really need. And it was that way, and I tell you the way Pop spent six-pences and shillings and half-crowns was a caution. A half crown is two shillings and a sixpence, but you can bet I didn't spend mine. All I had left after lending Chesterfield that money I've got yet and I'm going to keep it until I get to Paris where they have toy shops that are worth seeing whether you buy anything or not which you generally do. Why just before we landed Chesterfield was telling me of an oil-silk lion that he bought in Paris once that saved his life two years later in the Desert of Sahara.
It was one of those lions you blow up. You can carry it in your pocket when you haven't any wind in it. Then you take it out, unfold it, blow it up, fasten up the blow-hole and it looks real terrible, stands up alone and does everything but gnash his teeth and growl. Chesterfield was sleeping in the desert one night, when a real lion came his way and was about to devour him, when, with a sudden perspiration, he remembers the toy lion in his pocket, takes it out, blows it up, sets it down before the real lion, who, reckonizing his match retreats, but immediately returns. Of course the oil-silk lion remains cool. He hasn't got any nerves to get excited on. The real lion roars. The oil-silk lion says nothing. The real lion advances. The oil-silk lion doesn't say a word. The real lion gets mad. The oil-silk lion stays cool. The real lion hits him with one paw. The oil-silk lion just bounces and does nothing. The real lion hits him with his other paw and the oil-silk lion just bounces again and does nothing. But then the real lion hits him with both paws a tremenjus whack and the oil-silk lion busts like a blown-up grocer's bag with a report like a caution, which so scares the real lion that he's running yet. Eh? How would you like a toy like that?
It's getting so late now that Pop says I must go to bed, but to-morrow I'll write again and tell you how we got up to London and what I've seen so far.
Yours ever, Bob.