[Illustration: JACK PROTESTS AGAINST ALL RAILWAYS]
Jack was highly enraged, and proceeded to squint his eyes inside out, and
abuse all railways, and chairmen, and directors, and secretaries, and
clerks, and porters, vowing that railways were the greatest nuisances under
the sun--that they were a perfect impediment instead of a facility to
travelling--and declared that formerly a gentleman had nothing to do but
order his four horses, and have them turned out at every stage as he came
up, instead of being stopped in the _ridicklous_ manner he then was; and he
strutted and stamped about the station as if he would put a stop to the
whole line. His vehemence and big talk operated favourably on the Cockney
station-master, who, thinking he must be a duke, or some great man, began
to consider how to get him forwarded. It being only a thinly populated
district--though there was a station equal to any mercantile emergency,
indeed to the requirements of the whole county--he ran the resources of the
immediate neighbourhood through his mind, and at length was obliged to
admit--humbly and respectfully--that he really was afraid Martha Muggins's
donkey was the only available article.
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