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."

I do believe I am the most unfortunate man at a time-table that ever was
born. I do not think it can be stupidity; for if it were mere stupidity,
I should occasionally, now and then when I was feeling well, not make a
mistake. It must be fate.

If there is one train out of forty that goes on "Saturdays only" to some
place I want to get to, that is the train I select to travel by on a
Friday. On Saturday morning I get up at six, swallow a hasty breakfast,
and rush off to catch a return train that goes on every day in