Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/103

 think who has never, or but seldom travelled. Almost as in the case of the poor Saurians of the Antediluvian period, which, by staying too long, at last became an integral part of the clay, which they had not originally entered with the intention of remaining there, so with travellers who have been sitting too long cooped up in a travelling carriage, there happens something that I propose to call assimilation.At last one hardly knows where the leathern cushion ends, and his individuality begins. Yes, I even think that one might have toothache or cramp in such a position, and mistake it for moth in the cloth, or mistake moth in the cloth for toothache or cramp

There are but few circumstances in the material world that do not afford to the thinking man the opportunity of making intellectual observations, and so I have often asked myself whether many errors, that have become common with us, many “Wrongs” that we think to be right, owe their origin to the fact, of having been sitting too long with the same company in the same travelling carriage? The leg, that you had to put there on the left, between the hat-box, and the little basket of cherries;—the knee, which you held pressed against the coach-door, not to make the lady opposite you think that you intended an attack on her crinoline or virtue;—the foot, covered with corns, that was so much afraid of the heels of the “commercial traveller” near you;—the neck, which you had to bend so long