ter it, or as a critic enjoys a play.

We passed such odd little villages every here and there. Little places
so crowded up between the railway and the river that there was no room in
them for any streets. All the houses were jumbled up together just
anyhow, and how any man who lived in the middle could get home without
climbing over half the other houses in the place I could not make out.
They were the sort of villages where a man's mother-in-law, coming to pay
him a visit, might wander around all day, hearing him, and even now and
then seeing him, yet never being able to get at him in consequence of not
knowing the way in.

A drunken man, living in one of these villages, could never hope to get
home. He would have to sit down outside, and wait till his head was
clear.

We witnessed the opening scenes of a very amusing little comedy at one of
the towns where the train drew up. The chief characters were played by
an active young goat, a small boy, an elderly man and a woman, parents of
the small boy and owners of the goat, and a dog.

First we heard a yell, and then, from out a cottage opposite the station,
bounded an innocent and happy goat, and gambolled around. A long rope,
one end of which was fastened to his neck, trailed behind him. After the
goat (in the double sense of the phrase) came a child. The child tried
to catch the goat by means of the rope, caught itself in the rope
instead, and went down with a bump and a screech. Whereupon a stout
woman, the boy's mother apparently, ran out from the cottage, and also
made for the goat. The goat flew down the road, and the woman flew after
it. At the first corner, the woman trod on the rope, and then _she_ went
down with a bump and a screech. Then the goat turned and ran up the
street, and, as it passed the cottage, the father ran out and tried to
stop it. He was an old man, but still seemed to have plenty of vigour in
him. He evidently guessed how his wife and child had gone down, and he
endeavoured to avoid the rope and to skip over it when it came near him.
But the goat's movements were too erratic for him. His turn came, and he
trod on the rope, and went down in the middle of the road, opposite his
own door, with a thud that shook us all up against each other as we stood
looking out of the carriage-window, and sat there and cursed the goat.
Then out ran a dog, barking furiously, and he went for the goat, and got
the end of the rope in his teeth and