human
Come, come, this won't do! Why, it's nearly half-past two; how in h-ll shall we get through? Don't you talk to ME. Pooh, pooh! delivered in that rhythmical fashion which all meditation assumes on a railway train. Exempli gratia: One night, having raised my window-curtain to look over a moonlit snowy landscape, as I pulled it down the lines of a popular comic song flashed across me. Fatal error! The train instantly took it up, and during the rest of the night I was haunted by this awful refrain:
gpt
Pull down the bel-lind, pull down the bel-lind; simebody's klink klink, O don't be shoo-shoo! Naturally this differs on the different railways. On the New York Central, where the road-bed is quite perfect and the steel rails continuous, I have heard this irreverent train give the words of a certain popular revival hymn after this fashion:
human
Hold the fort, for I am Sankey; Moody slingers still. Wave the swish swash back from klinky, klinky klanky kill. On the New York and New Haven, where there are many switches, and the engine whistles at every cross road, I have often heard,
gpt
Tommy make room for your whooopy! that's a little clang; bumpity, bumpity, boopy, clikitty, clikitty, clang. Poetry, I fear, fared little better. One starlit night, coming from Quebec, as we slipped by a virgin forest, the opening lines of Evangeline flashed upon me. But all I could make of them was this:
human
This is the forest primeval-eval; the groves of the pines and the hemlocks-locks-locks-locks-loooock! The train was only
gpt
or