NEXT DOOR TO A TRAGEDY 



in Bath to my office in the show yard not only 

 all the books, correspondence, entry forms, and 

 other documents relating to the show, but all 

 such show machinery as admission tickets, prize- 

 cards, judges' and stewards' books, and a host 

 of other paraphernalia, without which you cannot 

 run a show. These necessary adjuncts filled 

 nearly twenty large cases, and, the show being 

 held at Bridgwater, I arranged with the G.W.R. 

 for their conveyance in a horse-box attached to 

 the passenger train in which myself and staff 

 travelled. On arrival at Bristol, an officious 

 official, for some inscrutable reason, and in 

 breach of the understanding between the Company 

 and myself, had the horse-box detached from 

 the train, but promised that it should come on 

 by the next one. All my remonstrances were 

 in vain, for in those early days, when I was a 

 stranger to the West, railways in that part of 

 the kingdom did not know, as well as they do 

 now, the new secretary or his capacity for making 

 himself extremely disagreeable when compacts 

 were not fulfilled. 



With a child-like belief in railway officials, 

 not always borne out by maturer experience, I 

 re-embarked in the train, which I had left for 

 expostulatory purposes, and duly arrived at 

 Bridgwater. Having extorted a promise from 

 the officials there that they would dispatch to 

 the show yard the contents of the horse-box 

 immediately on arrival, I wended my way to the 

 yard to make preparations for receiving them. 

 As after two or three hours' wait there were no 

 signs of my cases, back I went to the railway 



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