encouragement to disclose the real state of his
feelings, and who had been pining beneath
his weary secret, now burst into tears, and
confessed that he thought another day in the
place would be the death of him.

So, the two idle apprentices followed the
donkey until the night was far advanced.
Whether he was recaptured by the town-
council, or is bolting at this hour through the
United Kingdom, they know not. They hope
he may be still bolting; if so, their best
wishes are with him.

It entered Mr. Idle's head, on the borders
of Cumberland, that there could be no idler
place to stay at, except by snatches of a few
minutes each, than a railway station. " An
intermediate station on a line—a junction—
anything of that sort," Thomas suggested.
Mr. Goodchild approved of the idea as eccentric,
and they journeyed on and on, until
they came to such a station where there was
an Inn.

"Here," said Thomas, " we may be
luxuriously lazy; other people will travel for us,
as it were, and we shall laugh at their
folly."

It was a Junction-Station, where the wooden
razors before mentioned shaved the air very
often, and where the sharp electric-telegraph
bell was in a very restless condition. All
manner of cross-lines of rails came zig-zaging
into it, like a Congress of iron vipers; and, a
little way out of it, a pointsman in an elevated
signal-box was constantly going through the
motions of drawing immense quantities of
beer at a public-house bar. In one direction,
confused perspectives of embankments and
arches were to be seen from the platform;
in the other, the rails soon disentangled
themselves into two tracks, and shot away
under a bridge, and curved round a corner.
Sidings were there, in which empty luggage-
vans and cattle-boxes often butted against
each other as if they couldn't agree; and
warehouses were there, in which great
quantities of goods seemed to have taken the veil
(of the consistency of tarpaulin), and to have
retired from the world without any hope of
getting back to it. Refreshment-rooms were
there; one, for the hungry and thirsty Iron
Locomotives where their coke and water were
ready, and of good quality, for they were
dangerous to play tricks with; the other, for
the hungry and thirsty human Locomotives,
who might take what they could get, and
whose chief consolation was provided in the
form of three terrific urns or vases of white
metal, containing nothing, each forming a
breastwork for a defiant and apparently
much-injured woman.

Established at this Station, Mr. Thomas
Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild resolved to
enjoy it. But, its contrasts were very violent,
and there was also an infection in it.

First, as to its contrasts. They were only
two, but they were Lethargy and Madness.
The Station was either totally unconscious, or
wildly raving. By day, in its unconscious
state, it looked as if no life could come to it,
—as if it were all rust, dust, and ashes—as if
the last train for ever, had gone without
issuing any Return-Tickets—as if the last
Engine had uttered its last shriek and burst.
One awkward shave of the air from the
wooden razor, and everything changed. Tight
office-doors flew open, panels yielded, books,
newspapers, travelling-caps and wrappers
broke out of brick walls, money chinked,
conveyances oppressed by nightmares of luggage
came careering into the yard, porters started
up from secret places, ditto the much-injured
women, the shining bell, who lived in a
little tray on stilts by himself, flew into a
man's hand and clamoured violently. The
pointsman aloft in the signal-box made the
motions of drawing, with some difficulty,
hogsheads of beer. Down Train! More
beer. Up Train! More beer. Cross Junction
Train! More beer. Cattle Train! More
beer. Goods Train! Simmering, whistling,
trembling, rumbling, thundering. Trains on
the whole confusion of intersecting rails,
crossing one another, bumping one another,
hissing one another, backing to go forward,
tearing into distance to come close. People
frantic. Exiles seeking restoration to their
native carriages, and banished to remoter
climes. More beer and more bell. Then, in
a minute, the Station relapsed into stupor as
the stoker of the Cattle Train, the last to
depart, went gliding out of it, wiping the
long nose of his oil-can with a dirty pocket-
handkerchief.

By night, in its unconscious state, the
station was not so much as visible. Something
in the air, like an enterprising chemist's
established in business on one of the boughs
of Jack's beanstalk, was all that could be
discerned of it under the stars. In a
moment it would break out, a constellation of
gas. In another moment, twenty rival
chemists, on twenty rival beanstalks, carne
into existence. Then, the Furies would be
seen, waving their lurid torches up and
down the confused perspectives of embankments
and arches—would be heard, too,
wailing and shrieking. Then, the Station
would be full of palpitating trains, as in the
day; with the heightening difference that
they were not so clearly seen as in the day,
whereas the station walls, starting forward
under the gas, like a hippopotamus's eyes,
dazzled the human locomotives with the
sauce-bottle, the cheap music, the bedstead,
the distorted range of buildings where the
patent safes are made, the gentleman in the
rain with the registered umbrella, the lady
returning from the ball with the registered
respirator, and all their other embellishments.
And now, the human locomotives,
creased as to their countenances and
purblind as to their eyes, would swarm forth in
a heap, addressing themselves to the
mysterious urns and the much-injured women;