SMALL POTATOES.--_Q._ Why are regular travellers by the Shepherd's Bush and City Railway like certain vegetables?

_A._ Because they're "Tubers."

[Ill.u.s.tration: INOPPORTUNE

_Newsboy (to irritable old gent who has just lost his train)._ "Buy a comic paper, sir?"

[_Luckily, the old gentleman was out of breath from his hurry._]

THE TYMPANUM

(_A Remonstrance at a Railway Station_)

The tympanum! The tympanum!

Oh! who will save the aural drum By softening to some gentler squeak The whistle's shrill _staccato_ shriek?

Oh! Engine-driver, did you know How your blast smites one like a blow, An inward shock, a racking strain, A knife-like thrust of poignant pain, Whilst groping through the tunnel murk You would not with that fiendish jerk Let out that _sudden_ blast of steam Whose screaming almost makes _us_ scream Thy whistle weird perchance may be A sad and sore necessity, But cannot Law and sense combine To--well, in short to draw the line?-- Across the open let it shrill From moor to moor, from hill to hill, But in the tunnel's crypt-like gloom, The station's cramped reverberant room, A gentler, _graduated_ blast!

_Do_ let it loose, whilst dashing past, So shall it spare us many a pang; That dread explosive bursting "bang"

Which nearly splits the aural drum, The poor long-suffering tympanum!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE BLOCK SYSTEM"

_Affable Old Lady (to ticket clerk--morning express just due)._ "No, I'm not going up this morning, but one of your penny time-tables, if you please; and can you tell me"--(_Shouts from the crowd_, "Now then, mum!")--"if the 10.45 stops at Dribblethorp Junction, and if Shandry's 'bus meets the trains, which it always does on market days, I know, 'cause my married sister's cousin, as is a farmer, generally goes by it.

But if it don't come o' Toosday as well as Wednesday, I shall have to get out at Shuntbury and take a fly, which runs into money, you know, when you're by yourself like. If you'll be good enough to look out the trains--and change for half a sovereign, if you please. Oh no, I'm in no hurry, as I ain't a goin' till next week. Fine morn----"

[_Bell rings. Position stormed._]

WONDERS OF MODERN TRAVEL

Wonder whether accidents will be as numerous as usual during this excursion season.

Wonder if a train, conveying third-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, was ever known to start without somebody or other exclaiming, "_Now_ we're off!"

Wonder why it is that foreigners in general, and fat Germans in particular, always will persist in smoking with the windows shut.

Wonder whether anybody was ever known to bellow out the name of any station in such a manner that a stranger could succeed in understanding him.

Wonder whether it is cheaper to pay for broken bones, or for such increase of service as, in very many cases, might prevent their being broken.

Wonder how a signalman can by any means contrive to keep a cool head on his shoulders, while working as one sees him in a signal-box of gla.s.s, and the temperature of the tropics.

Wonder if upon an average there are three men in a thousand who have never been puzzled by the hieroglyphics in _Bradshaw_.

Wonder whether any railway guard or porter has ever been detected in the very act of virtuously declining to accept a proffered tip, on the ground that money, by the bye-laws, is forbidden to be taken by servants of the company.

Wonder how many odd coppers the boys who sell the newspapers pocket in a week by the benevolence of pa.s.sengers.

Wonder what diminution there would be in the frequency of accidents, supposing directors were made purse-onally liable.

Wonder whether people take to living at Redhill because it is so redhilly accessible by railway.

TO THE STATION.

Wonder if my watch is right, or slow, or fast.

Wonder if that church clock is right.

Wonder if the cabman will take eighteenpence from my house to the station.

THE STATION.

Wonder if the porter understood what I said to him about the luggage.

Wonder if I shall see him again.

Wonder if I shall know him when I _do_ see him again.

Wonder if I gave my writing-case to the porter or left it in the cab.

Wonder where I take my ticket.

Wonder in which pocket I put my gold.

Wonder where I got that bad half-crown which the clerk won't take.

Wonder if that's another that I've just put down.

Wonder where the porter is who took my luggage.

Wonder where my luggage is.

Wonder again whether I gave my writing-case to the porter, or left it in the cab.

Wonder which is my train.

Wonder if the guard knows anything about that porter with the writing-case.

Wonder if it _will_ be "all right" as the guard says it will be.

Wonder if my luggage, being now labelled, will be put into the proper van.