HERE FOLLOWS THE SUBSTANCE OF WHAT
WAS SEEN, HEARD, OR OTHERWISE PICKED UP,
BY THE GENTLEMAN FOR NOWHERE, IN
HIS CAREFUL STUDY OF THE JUNCTION.

MAIN LINE.
THE BOY AT MUGBY.

I am The Boy at Mugby. That's about what
I am.

You don't know what I mean? What a pity!
But I think you do. I think you must. Look
here. I am the Boy at what is called The
Refreshment Room at Mugby Junction, and what's
proudest boast is, that it never yet refreshed
a mortal being.

Up in a corner of the Down Refreshment
Room at Mugby Junction, in the height of
twenty-seven cross draughts (I've often counted
'em while they brush the First Class hair
twenty-seven ways), behind the bottles, among
the glasses, bounded on the nor'-west by the
beer, stood pretty far to the right of a metallic
object that's at times the tea-urn and at times
the soup-tureen, according to the nature of the
last twang imparted to its contents which are the
same groundwork, fended off from the traveller
by a barrier of stale sponge-cakes erected atop
of the counter, and lastly exposed sideways to
the glare of Our Missis's eye—- you ask a
Boy so sitiwated, next time you stop in a
hurry at Mugby, for anything to drink; you
take particular notice that he'll try to seem not
to hear you, that he'll appear in a Absent
manner to survey the Line through a transparent
medium composed of your head and body,
and that he won't serve you as long as you can
possibly bear it. That's Me.

What a lark it is! We are the Model Establishment,
we are, at Mugby. Other Refreshment
Rooms send their imperfect young ladies
up to be finished off by our Missis. For some
of the young ladies, when they're new to the
business, come into it mild! Ah! Our Missis,
she soon takes that out of 'em. Why, I originally
come into the business meek myself. But Our
Missis she soon took that out of me.

What a delightful lark it is! I look upon us
Refreshmenters as ockipying the only proudly
independent footing on the Line. There's Papers
for instance—- my honourable friend if he will
allow me to call him so—- him as belongs to
Smith's bookstall. Why he no more dares to
be up to our Refreshmenting games, than he
dares to jump atop of a locomotive with her
steam at full pressure, and cut away upon her
alone, driving himself, at limited-mail speed.
Papers, he'd get his head punched at every
compartment, first second and third, the whole
length of a train, if he was to ventur to imitate
my demeanour. It's the same with the porters,
the same with the guards, the same with the
ticket clerks, the same the whole way up to the
secretary, traffic manager, or very chairman.
There ain't a one among 'em on the nobly independent
footing we are. Did you ever catch one
of them, when you wanted anything of him,
making a system of surveying the Line through
a transparent medium composed of your head
and body? I should hope not.

You should see our Bandolining Room at
Mugby Junction. It's led to, by the door behind
the counter which you'll notice usually stands
ajar, and it's the room where Our Missis and
our young ladies Bandolines their hair. You
should see 'em at it, betwixt trains, Bandolining
away, as if they was anointing themselves for the
combat. When you're telegraphed, you should
see their noses all a going up with scorn, as if it
was a part of the working of the same Cooke
and Wheatstone electrical machinery. You
should hear Our Missis give the word " Here
comes the Beast to be Fed!" and then you
should see 'em indignantly skipping across the
Line, from the Up to the Down, or Wicer
Warsaw, and begin to pitch the stale pastry into
the plates, and chuck the sawdust sangwiches
under the glass covers, and get out the—- ha
ha ha!—- the Sherry—- O my eye, my eye!—- for
your Refreshment.

It's only in the Isle of the Brave and Land
of the Free (by which of course I mean to say
Britannia) that Refreshmenting is so effective,
so 'olesome, so constitutional, a check upon the
public. There was a foreigner, which having
politely, with his hat off, beseeched our young
ladies and Our Missis for " a leetel gloss hoff
prarndee," and having had the Line surveyed
through him by all and no other acknowledgment,
was a proceeding at last to help himself,
as seems to be the custom in his own country,
when Our Missis with her hair almost a
coming un-Bandolined with rage, and her
eyes omitting sparks flew at him, cotched
the decanter out of his hand, and said: " Put
it down! I won't allow that!" The foreigner
turned pale, stepped back with his arms
stretched out in front of him, his hands clasped,
and his shoulders riz, and exclaimed: " Ah!
Is it possible this! That these disdaineous
females and this ferocious old woman are placed
here by the administration, not only to
empoison the voyagers, but to affront them! Great
Heaven! How arrives it? The English people.
Or is he then a slave? Or idiot?" Another time,
a merry wideawake American gent had tried the
sawdust and spit it out, and had tried the Sherry
and spit that out, and had tried in vain to sustain
exhausted natur upon Butter-Scotch, and had
been rather extra Bandolined and Line-surveyed
through, when, as the bell was ringing and
he paid Our Missis, he says, very loud and
good-tempered: " I tell Yew what 'tis, ma'arm.
I la'af. Theer! I la'af. I Dew. I oughter
ha,' seen most things, for I hail from the Onlimited
side of the Atlantic Ocean, and I haive
travelled right slick over the Limited, head on
through Jee-rusalemm and the East, and likeways
France and Italy, Europe Old World, and
am now upon the track to the Chief Europian