An Absent-Minded German

ttle proud of the promptness and energy I displayed in what might have been a most perilous situation. People have sneered and laughed at me since, but I don't believe there is one among my friends and acquaintances who would have kept his presence of mind as I did.

It chanced one day in spring that I was travelling in Switzerland, on my way from Sargans to Bâle, after a winter at Davos.

I had been fortunate enough to have a compartment to myself almost all the way, and was thus enabled to revel in the pure, fresh air rushing in through the open window, a luxury of which any foreigner sharing my coup