Why do you close the door of communication when I offer a remonstrance?
Why can I not obtain redress upon complaint to the station-master?
Why am I chased off the premises by a private policeman when I am anxious to catch the next train?
Why is my luggage being placarded with places that certainly do not correspond with my desired destination?
Why can I not have my tea cool enough to drink? and why I am hurried out of the refreshment-room before I can discuss my bread and butter?
Why must I pay half-a-crown for comestibles valued on the card at less than a shilling?
Why am I forced into a carriage already overcrowded with aged females, sickly children, and snarling spaniels?
Why can I not have a seat, considering I have paid the full fare, and amply tipped the guard?
Why can I not have a window open, considering that the glass stands at ninety in the shade?
Why can I not smoke, having chosen a smoking carriage?
Why should I be dictated to by a disagreeable and elderly stranger, who snores half the journey, and helps herself to ardent spirits in the tunnels?
Why should I be threatened with imprisonment, and be only pardoned by repaying my fare because I have lost my ticket?
And, lastly (for the present), why have I been carried to Little Peddlington-on-the-Ditch when I desired to reach the British Coast _en route_ for Paris?
III.--THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT SAWBATH-BREAKER.
It was an ancient poacher-man, Bronzed as a penny-bun;-- "By thy beady eye, now tell me why, Thou offspring of a gun,
O tell me why beneath thy Exceeding hoary tuft Precisely half a brace of grouse chin's Hangs, admirably stuffed?"
He blinked his beady eye; his voice Was singularly clear; And as I listened to his tale I could not choose but hear.
"Mon, ye mun ken I have not aye Been sec a feckless loon; In me behold the wreck of what Was once The MCAROON.
Oft have I made a merrie bag Across my native heath; Shot o'er my ain ancestral dawgs Or aiblins underneath.
Until lang syne, a monie year-- Ye couldna weel be born-- The blessed twalfth of August fell Upon a Sawbath morn.
Braw were the birds, my gun was braw, My bluid was pipin' hot; I thocht it crime to gie 'em time-- Allowance like a yacht.
Scarce had I bagged but ane wee bird, There was the de'il to pay: It's unco deadly skaith wi' Scots To break the Sawbath day.