We smoked a good many penny cigars during our stay in Germany, and that we were none the worse for doing so I consider as proof of our splendid physique and constitution. I think the German cigar test might, with reason, be adopted by life insurance offices.—Question: “Are you at present, and have you always been, of robust health?” Answer: “I have smoked a German cigar, and still live.” Life accepted.
Towards three o’clock we worked our way round to the station, and began looking for our train. We hunted all over the place, but could not find it anywhere. The central station at Munich is an enormous building, and a perfect maze of passages and halls and corridors. It is much easier to lose oneself in it, than to find anything in it one may happen to want. Together and separately B. and I lost ourselves and each other some twenty-four times. For about half an hour we seemed to be doing nothing else but rushing up and down the station looking for each other, suddenly finding each other, and saying, “Why, where the dickens have you been? I have been hunting for you everywhere. Don’t go away like that,” and then immediately losing each other again.
And what was so extraordinary about the matter was that every time, after losing each other, we invariably met again—when we did meet—outside the door of the third-class refreshment room.
We came at length to regard the door of the third-class refreshment room as “home,” and to feel a thrill of joy when, in the course of our weary wanderings through far-off waiting-rooms and lost-luggage bureaus and lamp depots, we saw its old familiar handle shining in the distance, and knew that there, beside it, we should find our loved and lost one.
When any very long time elapsed without our coming across it, we would go up to one of the officials, and ask to be directed to it.
“Please can you tell me,” we would say, “the nearest way to the door of the third-class refreshment room?”
When three o’clock came, and still we had not found the 3.10 train, we became quite anxious about the poor thing, and made inquiries concerning it.
“The 3.10 train to Ober-Ammergau,” they said. “Oh, we’ve not thought about that yet.”
“Haven’t thought about it!” we exclaimed indignantly. “Well, do for heaven’s sake wake up a bit. It is 3.5 now!”
“Yes,” they answered, “3.5 in the afternoon; the 3.10 is a night train. Don’t you see it’s printed in thick type? All the trains between six in the evening and six in the morning are printed in fat figures, and the day trains in thin. You have got plenty of time. Look around after supper.”
