CHAPTER XXXI.
The spirit of wrath--not the words--is the sin; and the spirit of wrath
is cursing. We begin to swear before we can talk.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
November 11. On the road. This train-express goes twenty and one-half
miles an hour, schedule time; but it is fast enough, the outlook upon sea
and land is so interesting, and the cars so comfortable. They are not
English, and not American; they are the Swiss combination of the two.
A narrow and railed porch along the side, where a person can walk
up and down. A lavatory in each car. This is progress; this is
nineteenth-century spirit. In New Zealand, these fast expresses run twice
a week. It is well to know this if you want to be a bird and fly through
the country at a 20-mile gait; otherwise you may start on one of the five
wrong days, and then you will get a train that can't overtake its own
shadow.
By contrast, these pleasant cars call to mind the branch-road cars at
Maryborough, Australia, and the passengers' talk about the branch-road
and the hotel.
Somewhere on the road to Maryborough I changed for a while to a
smoking-carriage. There were two gentlemen there; both riding backward,
one at each end of the compartment.
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