Describes his journey by train through the French countryside. Transcription: where stood the Lighthouse. Many idlers were assembled here, looking forth on the Channel, above a lovely sunset sky, with here and there a sharply defined star, the gradations of color in the atmosphere being unspeakably beautiful. A small crowd had assembled round a boy who lay, apparently, in a fit; a number of women were hauling in a small barque; lively girls in caps sans bonnet, or sh only wearing their sleek soft hair paced about, and English servants, with extreme straitness of outline smoked cigars and talk
Describes his journey by train through the French countryside. Transcription: where stood the Lighthouse. Many idlers were assembled here, looking forth on the Channel, above a lovely sunset sky, with here and there a sharply defined star, the gradations of color in the atmosphere being unspeakably beautiful. A small crowd had assembled round a boy who lay, apparently, in a fit; a number of women were hauling in a small barque; lively girls in caps sans bonnet, or sh only wearing their sleek soft hair paced about, and English servants, with extreme straitness of outline smoked cigars and talked Mayfair dialect. Returning to our Cafe, we had a bottle of wine, and presently a rapid run to the Depot, a soldier quickening us by the way with 'Allez! vite!' Our Swiss friend enters the first class; we, in the second are confined with seven other perspiring mortals, on a close summer's night. And thus we start off, journeying through France, and the night. Soldiers appear at all the stations, and much expenditure of excitability and French occurs. The carriage is superior to an English second class one, but the over crowding induces a lively sense of the old torture of 'des Oubliettes.' Our fellow traveller are all British; with the exception of a very ugly little, elderly Frenchman, with a blunt, shapeless nose, a mouth like an aged toad's, and a projecting chin, who sits in a corner, and presently goes to sleep, with his face indenting the top of his hat. Opposite me is a Londonish young fellow, and a girl, I presume his sister, who yawns wearily as the night wanes. 13. Wednesday. As the day dawns on our left, presenting a bright light beneath an uprising curtain of cloud, resting as on columnar bases, the night travellers look ludicrously miserable. No fences or hedgerows are seen in the landscape on either hand, no Title: Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries: Volume 7, page 83, June 12-13, 1855 . 12 June 1855. Gunn, Thomas Butler, 1826-1903
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