It was by a similar accident--desiring to transfer myself from Bourges to Auxerre--that I discovered the wonderful junction-town of Nevers, which, despite the guide-books, is more interesting than either of the others. It possesses a Gothic cathedral with an apse at either end, that looks as if two churches had collided and telescoped each other. There is also a Romanesque church at Nevers which is just as simple and as manly as either of the famous abbeys in Caen; and a chateau with rounded towers, which once belonged to Mazarin. But the most amusing feature of this town is that, though Bourges packs itself to bed at ten o'clock, Nevers sits blithely up till twelve, listening to music in cafes, and watching moving-pictures; and this amiable incongruity in a medieval town makes you bless that complication of the time-table which has forced you, against forethought, to stay there over night. It is difficult for me to remember a railway junction in which there was nothing to do; but perhaps Pyrgos, in Greece, comes nearest to this description. At this point, you change cars on your way from Patras to Olympia. The town is made of mud: that is to say, the single-storied houses are built of unbaked clay. There is nothing to see in Pyrgos. But I amused myself by addressing the inhabitants, in the English language, with an eloquent oration that soon gathered them under my control; and thereafter I set a hundred of them at the pleasant task of trying to push the train for Olympia on its way to take me to the Hermes of Praxiteles. I knew no word of their language, nor did they of mine; but they understood that that train should be started, if human force were sufficient to help the cars upon their way: and finally, when the engine puffed and snorted with a tardily awakened sense of duty, the train was cheered by the entire population as I waved my hand from the rear platform and quoted one of Daniel Webster's perorations. * * * * * Is it--I have often wondered--so difficult as people think, to be happy in an hour "spent waiting at a railway junction"?... The kingdom of happiness is within us; or else there is no truth in our assumption that the will of man is free: and I am inclined to pity a man who, being happy in Amalfi--the loveliest of all the places I have ever seen--cannot also manage to be happy in Pyrgos--or in Essex Junction--and to communicate his happiness to his responsive fellow-travelers.