as the train slows down for the platform, cast a penny on your
knee and abide its fall!

Or if on principle you abhor a choice that is made wickedly on the
falling of a coin, let an irrelevant circumstance direct your
destination! I once walked outside of London, making my start at
Dorking for no other reason except that Sam Weller's mother-in-law had
once lived there. You will recall how the elder Mr. Weller in the hour
of his affliction discoursed on widows in the taproom of the Marquis
of Granby when the funeral was done, and how later, being pestered
with the Reverend Mr. Stiggins, he immersed him in the horse-trough to
ease his grief. All through the town I looked for red-nosed men who
might be descended from the reverend shepherd, and once when I passed
a horse-trough of uncommon size I asked the merchant at the corner if
it might not be the very place. I was met, however, by such a vacant
stare--for the fellow was unlettered--that to rouse him I bought a
cucumber from an open crate against the time of lunch, and I followed
my pursuit further in the town. The cucumber was of monstrous length
and thin. All about the town its end stuck out of my pocket
inquisitively, as though it were a fellow traveler down from London to
see the sights. But although I inquired for the Weller family, it
seems that they were dead and gone. Even the Marquis of Granby had
disappeared, with its room behind the bar where Mr. Stiggins drank
pineapple rum with water, _luke_, from the kettle on the hob.

We left Dorking and walked all afternoon through a pleasant sunny
country, up hill and down, to the town of Guildford. At four o'clock,
to break the journey, we laid out our lunch of bread and cheese and
cucumber, and rested for an hour. The place was a grassy bank along a
road above a fertile valley where men were pitching hay. Their shouts
were carried across the fields with an agreeable softness. Today,
doubtless, women work in those fields.

On another occasion we walked from Maidstone to Rochester on
pilgrimage to the inn where Alfred Jingle borrowed Mr. Winkle's coat
to attend the Assembly, when he made love to the buxom widow. War had
just been declared between Britain and Germany, and soldiers guarded
the roads above the town. At a tea-room in the outskirts army
officers ate at a neighboring table. Later, it is likely, they were in
the retreat from Mons: for the expeditionary force crossed the channel
within a week. Yet so does