nding about,
looking sad and weary, we went up to him and showed him our tickets. The
sight was like a ray of sunshine to him; and all his care was immediately
forgotten. If we had not a ticket with us at the time, we went and
bought one. A mere single third to the next station would gladden him
sufficiently in most cases; but if the poor fellow appeared very
woe-begone, and as if he wanted more than ordinary cheering up, we got
him a second-class return.

For the purpose of our journey to Ober-Ammergau and back, we each carried
with us a folio containing some ten or twelve first-class tickets between
different towns, covering in all a distance of some thousand miles; and
one afternoon, at Munich, seeing a railway official, a cloak-room keeper,
who they told us had lately lost his aunt, and who looked exceptionally
dejected, I proposed to B. that we should take this man into a quiet
corner, and both of us show him all our tickets at once--the whole twenty
or twenty-four of them--and let him take them in his hand and look at
them for as long as he liked. I wanted to comfort him.

B., however, advised against the suggestion. He said that even if it did
not turn the man's head (and it was more than probable that it would), so
much jealousy would be created against him among the other railway people
throughout Germany, that his life would be made a misery to him.

So we bought and showed him a first-class return to the next station but
one; and it was quite pathetic to watch the poor fellow's face brighten
up at the sight, and to see the faint smile creep back to the lips from
which it had so long been absent.

But at times, one wishes that the German railway official would control
his passion for tickets--or, at least, keep it within due bounds.

Even the most kindly-hearted man grows tired of showing his ticket all
day and night long, and the middle of a wearisome journey is not the
proper time for a man to come to the carriage-window and clamour to see
your "billet."

You are weary and sleepy. You do not know where your ticket is. You are
not quite sure that you have got a ticket; or if you ever had one,
somebody has taken it away from you. You have put it by very carefully,
thinking that it would not be wanted for hours, and have forgotten where.

There are eleven pockets in the suit you have on, and five more in the
overcoat on the rack. Maybe, it is in one of those pockets. If not, it
is possibly in o