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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1862 Excerpt: ...are facetiously termed ' refreshments' had almost disappeared behind the counter, sitting so that only their heads could be seen dotted among the brass coffee-urns, or forming pleasant backgrounds to the sandwich piles; the ticket-clerk had closed his window with a bang, and was paring his nails, and whistling 'Ah, che la morte' with all his might; and several of the porters had retired into a mysterious hole, whence came a fragrant smell of wheel-grease and lamp-oil. I looked round for my little boy, whom I had left deeply engaged in examining the illustrated covers of the books on the stall, but he was no longer there; and I presently discovered him, with his grave little face and his deep, earnest eyes, listening to an old porter, who was leaning with his back against a first-class carriage, which he had just pushed to the far end of a siding of the railway shed. 'Shunted is what we call it, master,' said the old man--' put hero in limbo, to rest like, out o' the way. This heer carriage have been goin' up and down, up and down the line for iver so many months, now rattlin' Express, now crawlin' Parliamentary, but allays on the go. And now the guv'nors heer have give orders that she's to be laid by, and afore she goes out again she'll be thoroughly overhauled, and have her framework looked to, and be new-riveted and greased, and made to run--ah! as slick as when she was first new out of the coachmaker's yard.' My little boy nodded, and seemed much interested in the fate of this carriage, walking gravely round it, and glancing at the wheels with a professionally half-shut eye, as if he were a man of mature age, whose every thought had been devoted to coach-buildmg; but I retraced my steps to my hard wooden bench, and fell to pondering on what the old man h...
