United States or Vietnam ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When free from soldiers, wagons, and the filthy traces of a camp he saw villages with peasants and peasant women, gentlemen's country houses, fields where cattle were grazing, posthouses with stationmasters asleep in them, he rejoiced as though seeing all this for the first time.
It was a joke to see all the waiters tumbling over each other to serve him. It s just the same with Father, except that the stationmasters don't all salute. Father looks frightfully distinguished too, but he is not in uniform.
"I seem to have noticed that peculiar, splay-footed gait in stationmasters, now that you mention it." "Quite so. The arch of the foot has given way; the plantar ligaments have become stretched and the deep calf muscles weakened.
"Vos papiers, s'il vous plait!" Again I produced bundles of papers permis de sejour in Paris, Amiens, Rouen, Orleans, Le Mans; laisser-passer to Boulogne, Dieppe, Havre, Dunkirk, Aire-sur-Lys, Bethune and Hazebrouck; British passports and papiers vises by French consuls, French police, French generals, French mayors, and French stationmasters. But they were hardly satisfied.
The method of doing so is easy: It is to have it laid down categorically, and accepted by all the Powers, that henceforth all railways on Chinese soil are a vital portion of Chinese sovereignty and must be controlled directly from Peking by a National Railway Board; that stationmasters, personnel and police, must be Chinese citizens, technical foreign help being limited to a set standard; and that all railway concessions are henceforth to be considered simply as building concessions which must be handed over, section by section, as they are built, to the National Railway Board.
On the score of not speaking Dutch or Malay, no English man or woman need be deterred from visiting Java. English is spoken at all the hotels, and though all the train conductors and stationmasters may not do so, there is sure to be an educated Dutchman or lady in the car to whom one may turn for help, which is always readily given.
There was a knocking and a calling "What ho within there!" and I got up in the grey dawn and found my cousins outside our carriage, looking rather chilled. A native stationmaster had promised to wire to them for me, to tell them we would finish our eight hours sleep at the Bangalore siding. But here they were and had received no wire! Therefore, put not your faith in native stationmasters.
Usually he's a graduate of an agricultural school, but we have a few who are descendants of the crew of the first Alexander, and there's one old codger who was actually with him during the conquest. Most of our stationmasters are family men. We feel that a wife and children add to a man's stability and incidentally keep him from fooling around with the Lani."
I have time to write to-day, for all 4 of them have gone to S. on their cycles and I have never learned. It was lovely on the journey! It's so splendid to travel with an officer, and still more when he is a colonel. All the stationmasters saluted him and the guards could not do enough to show their respect.
No wonder R. takes such care to plant trees round stations and to encourage the stationmasters to grow flowers! Apropos, there were once prizes given to stationmasters with the best gardens. Water being a consideration, the prize was allotted to the best garden in inverse ratio to its distance from a water supply.
Word Of The Day