anticipations. It was a sort of un-Christmas tree with fishing-pole
branches, from which dangled articulated figures, bodied like men,
but with heads of foxes, tortoises, and other less likelybeasts,
--bewitching objects in impossible evolution to a bald-pated
urchin who stood gazing at it with all his soul. The peddler sat with
his eyes riveted on the boy, visions of a possible catch chasing
themselves through his brain. I watched him, while the crowd behind
stared at me. We made quite a tail of curiosity. The opiate was
having its effect; I began to feel soporifically calm. Then I went
up to the restaurant in the park and had lunch as quietly as
possible, in fear of friendly discovery.

Sufficiently punctual passengers being now permitted to board the
next train, I ensconced myself in a kind of parlor compartment, which,
fortunately, I continued to have all to myself, and was soon being
rolled westward across the great Musashi plain, ruminating. My chief
quarrel with railway rules is, I am inclined to think, that they
preach to the public what they fail to practice themselves. After
having denied me a paltry five minutes' grace at the station, the
officials proceeded to lose half an hour on the road in a most
exasperating manner. Of course the delay was quite exceptional.
Such a thing had never happened before, and would not happen
again--till the next time. But the phenomenal character of the
occurrence failed to console me, as it should no doubt have done.
My delay, too, was exceptional--on this line. Nor was I properly
mollified by repeated offers of hard-boiled eggs, cakes, and oranges,
which certain enterprising peddlers hawked up and down the platforms,
when we stopped, to a rhythmic chant of their own invention.

The only consolation lay in the memory of what travel over the