in an
Ontario town to take the International Limited for Montreal. She was on
the blackboard five minutes in disgrace. "Huh!" grunted a commercial
traveller. It was Sunday in the aforesaid Ontario town, and would be
Sunday in Toronto, toward which he was travelling. Even if we were on
time we should not arrive until 9.30--too late for church, too early to
go to bed, and the saloons all closed and barred. And yet this restless
traveller fretted and grieved because we promised to get into Toronto
five minutes late. Alas for the calculation of the train despatchers,
she was seven minutes overdue when she swept in and stood for us to
mount. The get-away was good, but at the eastern yard limits we lost
again. The people from the Pullmans piled into the cafe car and
overflowed into the library and parlor cars. The restless traveller
snapped his watch again, caught the sleeve of a passing trainman, and
asked "'S matter?" and the conductor answered, "Waiting for No. 5." Five
minutes passed and not a wheel turned; six, eight, ten minutes, and no
sound of the coming west-bound express. Up ahead we could hear the
flutter and flap of the blow-off; for the black flier was as restless as
the fat drummer who was snapping his watch, grunting "Huh," and washing
suppressed profanity down with _cafe noir_.

Eighteen minutes and No. 5 passed. When the great black steed of steam
got them swinging again we were twenty-five minutes to the bad. And how
that driver did hit the curves! The impatient traveller snapped his
watch again and said, refusing to be comforted, "She'll never make it."

Mayhap the fat and fretful drummer managed to communicate with the
engine-driver, or maybe the latter was unhappily married or had an
insurance policy; and it is also possible that he is just the devil to
drive. Anyway, he whipped that fine train of Pullmans, cafe, and parlor
cars through those peaceful, lamplighted, Sabbath-keeping Ontario towns
as though the whole show had cost not more than seven dollars, and his
own life less.

On a long lounge in the library car a well-nourished lawyer lay sleeping
in a way that I had not dreamed a political lawyer could sleep. One
gamey M.P.--double P, I was told--had been robbing this same lawyer of a
good deal of rest recently, and he was trying at a mile a minute to
catch up with his sleep. I could feel the sleeper slam her flanges
against the ball of the rail as we rounded the perfectly pitched curves,
and the