A LOST JOKE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 2 July 1913, Page 3

A LOST JOKE.

The music halls and "revues" of Paris, the carabets of the Montemarte (says ''■» correspondent of tin. Westminster Gazette), are losing a classic quip. >i'ay,- they have already lost it. For the trains of tine West State Railway of France are arriving and departing on schedule time! More and more, announces the astonished press, the West State trains are becoming punctual., ThLs is a revolution mare wonderful than you can realise unless you s have suffered yourself at the hands of the "West? State." What suburbanite of Paris does not recall the extraordinary scenes witnessed daily at the St. Lazare, the Paris terminus of the West State, in 1909-10. Train after train 'arrived with persisjtent regularity half an hour late—and some never arrived at all. At every cafo-concert in Paris librettists and song-writers made facetious plaisanteries at the expense of the West State. Then a. terrible thing occurred one peaceful morning at St. Lazare. Wifhout the least hint cf warning, one memorable day in 1911. an early train glided out of its siding only five .minutes behind its time! It was, practically speaking, empty. Then for the next twenty minute* came a long stream of bewildered passengers to the deserted quay. Patiently they waited ; then consternation seized them a s the news, whispered fearfully; slowly, crept, round —the train had gone! That was tho first of many such scenes that day, and often the life of an official, besieged by a, crowd of basely'deceived suburbanites, 'was not worth "a -moment's purchase. But that Avas the beginning of reform, and to-day the suburban trains show the excellent record of only 2} per "cent, of delay* of more than ten minutes, and i main lines only 3 1-3 per cent, of such delays.