So, at least, it seems to me; for not otherwise can I explain the fact that, like my beloved R.L.S., I have always enjoyed waiting at railway junctions.  I love not merely the marching phrases, but also the commas and the semi-colons of a journey,—­those mystic moments when “we look before and after” and need not “pine for what is not.”  I have never done much waiting in America, which is in the main a country of express trains, that hurl their lighted windows through the night like what Mr. Kipling calls “a damned hotel;” but there is scarcely a country of Europe except Russia whose railway junctions are unknown to me.  In many of these little nameless places I have experienced memorable hours:  and because the less enthusiastic Baedeker has neglected to star and double-star them, I have always wanted to praise them, in print somewhat larger than his own.  Space is lacking in the present article for a complete guide to all the railway junctions of Europe; but I should like to commemorate a few, in gratitude for what befell me there.

There is a junction in Bavaria whose name I have forgotten; but it is very near Rothenburg, the most picturesquely medieval of all German cities.  It consists merely of a station and two intersecting tracks.  When you enter the station, you observe what seems to be a lunch-counter; but if you step up to it and innocently order food, a buxom girl informs you that no food is ever served there—­and then everybody laughs.  This pleasant cachinnation attracts your attention to the assembled company.  It consists of many peasants, in their native costumes (which any painter would be willing to journey many miles to see), who are enjoying the delicious experience of travel.  They are great travelers, these peasants.  Once a month they take the train to Rothenburg, and once a month they journey home again, to talk of the experience for thirty days.  All of them have heard of Nuremberg [which is actually less than a hundred miles away],—­that vast and wonderful metropolis, so far, so very far, beyond the ultimate horizon of their lives.  They would like to see it some day—­as I should like to see the Taj Mahal—­but meanwhile they content themselves with the great adventure of going to Rothenburg,—­a city that is really much more interesting, if they could only know.  In the very midst of these congregated travelers, I casually set down a suit-case which was plastered over with many labels from many lands; and this suit-case affected them as I might be affected by a messenger from Mars.  They spelled out many unfamiliar languages, and a murmur of amazement swept through the entire company when one of them discovered that that suit-case had been to Morocco.  Morocco, they assured me, was a place where black men rode on camels; and I had no heart to tell them that it was a country where white men rode on mules.  Then another of these travelers—­an old man, with a face like one of Albrecht Duerer’s drawings—­discovered