Fuddled Facts.

Atrain is something that people run for, wait for, are late for, or miss, according to the degree of their perambulatory acceleration.

Most people take a train for granted, many for pleasure, and a very few for nothing.

The majority of the non-locomoting public imagines that train-hitching is a simple matter, and that when a train is to be made up the stationmaster strolls out of his stationery cabinet, or whatever his domicilary habitat is officially designated, and yawns: “Well, boys, what have we got in the yard to-day?” and that the assistant inspector of permanent ways and means replies: “Well, we've got a horse-box with a hot-box, a sleeper with insomnia, a couple of cattle trucks with catalepsy, a sheep truck that's a trifle too sheepish, a corridor car that's had a biff on the buffer, three” X “wagons with a load of three X which we have held for personal examination, a postal van that's being fumigated because we found a dead letter in a pigeon hole, a guard's van that's been in the vanguard of an argument concerning the right-of-way, and a young” A.B.“engine that's still learning its alphabet.” Whereon, the stationmaster replies: “Well, fill the ‘A.B.’ with H.O., stoke her up with C.O.A.L. until she starts to B.O.I.L., and hitch up anything you find on wheels, except the weighing machine and the roller skates of the inspector of rolling-stock.”

This emphatically is not the case. On the contrary, mustering rolling-stock, entails more linguistic and physical jerks than mustering live stock.