We stood in awed admiration before the "Great Tun," which is the chief object of interest in Heidelberg. What there is of interest in the sight of a big beer-barrel it is difficult, in one's calmer moments, to understand; but the guide book says that it is a thing to be seen, and so all we tourists go and stand in a row and gape at it. We are a sheep-headed lot. If, by a printer's error, no mention were made in the guide book of the Colosseum, we should spend a month in Rome, and not think it worth going across the road to look at. If the guide book says we must by no means omit to pay a visit to some famous pincushion that contains eleven million pins, we travel five hundred miles on purpose to see it!
From Heidelberg we went to Darmstadt. We spent half-an-hour at Darmstadt. Why we ever thought of stopping longer there, I do not know. It is a pleasant enough town to live in, I should say; but utterly uninteresting to the stranger. After one walk round it, we made inquiries as to the next train out of it, and being informed that one was then on the point of starting, we tumbled into it and went to Bonn.
From Bonn (whence we made one or two Rhine excursions, and where we ascended twenty-eight "blessed steps" on our knees--the chapel people called them "blessed steps;" WE didn't, after the first fourteen) we returned to Cologne. From Cologne we went to Brussels; from Brussels to Ghent (where we saw more famous pictures, and heard the mighty "Roland" ring "o'er lagoon and lake of sand"). From Ghent we went to Bruges (where I had the satisfaction of throwing a stone at the statue of Simon Stevin, who added to the miseries of my school-days, by inventing decimals), and from Bruges we came on here.
Finding out and arranging our trains has been a fearful work. I have left the whole business with B., and he has lost two stone over it. I used to think at one time that my own dear native Bradshaw was a sufficiently hard nut for the human intellect to crack; or, to transpose the simile, that Bradshaw was sufficient to crack an ordinary human nut. But dear old Bradshaw is an axiom in Euclid for stone-wall obviousness, compared with a through Continental time-table. Every morning B. has sat down with the book before him, and, grasping his head between his hands, has tried to understand it without going mad.
"Here we are," he has said. "This is the train that will do for us.
Leaves Munich at 1.45; gets to Heidelberg at 4--just in time for a cup of tea."
"Gets to Heidelberg at 4?" I exclaim. "Does the whole distance in two and a quarter hours? Why, we were all night coming down!"
"Well, there you are," he says, pointing to the time-table.
"Munich, depart 1.45; Heidelberg, arrive 4."
"Yes," I say, looking over his shoulder; "but don't you see the 4 is in thick type? That means 4 in the morning."
"Oh, ah, yes," he replies. "I never noticed that. Yes, of course.
No! it can't be that either. Why, that would make the journey fourteen hours. It can't take fourteen hours. No, of course not.
That's not meant for thick type, that 4. That's thin type got a little thick, that's all."
"Well, it can't be 4 this afternoon," I argue. "It must be 4 to-morrow afternoon! That's just what a German express train would like to do--take a whole day over a six hours' job!"
He puzzles for a while, and then breaks out with:
"Oh! I see it now. How stupid of me! That train that gets to Heidelberg at 4 comes from Berlin."
He seemed quite delighted with this discovery.
"What's the good of it to us, then?" I ask.
That depresses him.
"No, it is not much good, I'm afraid," he agrees. "It seems to go straight from Berlin to Heidelberg without stopping at Munich at all. Well then, where does the 1.45 go to? It must go somewhere."
Five minutes more elapse, and then he exclaims:
"Drat this 1.45! It doesn't seem to go anywhere. Munich depart 1.45, and that's all. It must go somewhere!"
Apparently, however, it does not. It seems to be a train that starts out from Munich at 1.45, and goes off on the loose.
Possibly, it is a young, romantic train, fond of mystery. It won't say where it's going to. It probably does not even know itself. It goes off in search of adventure.
"I shall start off," it says to itself, "at 1.45 punctually, and just go on anyhow, without thinking about it, and see where I get to."
Or maybe it is a conceited, headstrong young train. It will not be guided or advised. The traffic superintendent wants it to go to St.
Petersburg or to Paris. The old grey-headed station-master argues with it, and tries to persuade it to go to Constantinople, or even to Jerusalem if it likes that better--urges it to, at all events, make up its mind where it IS going--warns it of the danger to young trains of having no fixed aim or object in life. Other people, asked to use their influence with it, have talked to it like a father, and have begged it, for their sakes, to go to Kamskatka, or Timbuctoo, or Jericho, according as they have thought best for it; and then, finding that it takes no notice of them, have got wild with it, and have told it to go to still more distant places.
But to all counsel and entreaty it has turned a deaf ear.
"You leave me alone," it has replied; "I know where I'm going to.
Don't you worry yourself about me. You mind your own business, all of you. I don't want a lot of old fools telling me what to do. I know what I'm about."
What can be expected from such a train? The chances are that it comes to a bad end. I expect it is recognised afterwards, a broken-down, unloved, friendless, old train, wandering aimless and despised in some far-off country, musing with bitter regret upon the day when, full of foolish pride and ambition, it started from Munich, with its boiler nicely oiled, at 1.45.
B. abandons this 1.45 as hopeless and incorrigible, and continues his search.
