t--Hotel de Ville, some say
finest specimen of Gothic architecture in Europe--where my mother lives.
You could see the house if that church wasn't there." "Just passed
Alost--great hop centre. My grandfather used to live there; he's dead
now." "There's the Royal chateau--here, just on this side. My sister is
married to a man who lives there--not in the palace, I don't mean, but in
Laeken." "That's the dome of the Palais de Justice--they call Brussels
'Paris in little'--I like it better than Paris, myself--not so crowded.
I live in Brussels." "Louvain--there's Van de Weyer's statue, the 1830
revolutionist. My wife's mother lives in Louvain. She wants us to come
and live there. She says we are too far away from her at Brussels, but I
don't think so." "Leige--see the citadel? Got some cousins at
Leige--only second ones. Most of my first ones live at Maestricht"; and
so on all the way to Cologne.

I do not believe we passed a single town or village that did not possess
one or more specimens of this man's relatives. Our journey seemed, not
so much like a tour through Belgium and part of Northern Germany, as a
visit to the neighbourhood where this man's family resided.

I was careful to take a seat facing the engine at Ostend. I prefer to
travel that way. But when I awoke a little later on, I found myself
going backwards.

I naturally felt indignant. I said:

"Who's put me over here? I was over there, you know. You've no right to
do that!"

They assured me, however, that nobody had shifted me, but that the train
had turned round at Ghent.

I was annoyed at this. It seemed to me a mean trick for a train to start
off in one direction, and thus lure you into taking your seat (or
somebody else's seat, as the case might be) under the impression that you
were going to travel that way, and then, afterwards, turn round and go
the other way. I felt very doubtful, in my own mind, as to whether the
train knew where it was going at all.

At Brussels we got out and had some more coffee and rolls. I forget what
language I talked at Brussels, but nobody understood me. When I next
awoke, after leaving Brussels, I found myself going forwards again. The
engine had apparently changed its mind for the second time, and was
pulling the carriages the other way now. I began to get thoroughly
alarmed. This train was simply doing what it liked. There was no
reliance to be placed upon it whatever. The next thing it wo