front of us, and we waited there four hours till it could be got back.
It would be inhuman to make the reader suffer through this delay with us
after it ceased to be pleasure and began to be pain. Of course,
everybody of foreign extraction got out of the train and many even, went
forward to look at the engine and see what they could do about it;
others went partly forward and asked the bolder spirits on their way
back what was the matter. Now and then our locomotive whistled as if to
scare the wandering engine back to the rails. At moments the
station-master gloomily returned to the station from somewhere and
diligently despaired in front of it. Then we backed as if to let our
locomotive run up the siding and try to butt the freight-train off the
track to keep its engine company.

About this time the restaurant-car bethought itself of some sort of
late-afternoon repast, and we went forward and ate it with an interest
which we prolonged as much as possible. We returned to our car which was
now pervaded by an extremely bad smell. The smell drove us out, and we
watched a public-spirited peasant beating the acorns from a live-oak
near the station with a long pole. He brought a great many down, and
first filled his sash-pocket with them; then he distributed them among
the children of the third-class passengers who left the train and
flocked about him. But nobody seemed to do anything with the acorns,
though they were more than an inch long, narrow, and very sharp-pointed.
As soon as he had discharged his self-assumed duty the peasant lay down
on the sloping bank under the tree, and with his face in the grass, went
to sleep for all our stay, and for what I know the whole night after.

It did not now seem likely that we should ever reach Gordova, though
people made repeated expeditions to the front of the train, and came
back reporting that in an hour we should start. We interested ourselves