Mr Tompkins was very amused about his adventures in the relativistic city, but was sorry that the professor had not been with him to give any explanation of the strange things he had observed: the mystery of how the railway brakeman had been able to prevent the passengers from getting old worried him especially. Many a night he went to bed with the hope that he would see this interesting city again, but the dreams were rare and mostly unpleasant; last time it was the manager of the bank who was firing him for the uncertainty he introduced into the bank accounts… so now he decided that he had better take a holiday, and go for a week somewhere to the sea. Thus he found himself sitting in a compartment of a train and watching through the window the grey roofs of the city suburb gradually giving place to the green meadows of the countryside. He picked up a newspaper and tried to interest himself in the Vietnam conflict. But it all seemed to be so dull, and the railway carriage rocked him pleasantly.…

When he lowered the paper and looked out of the window again the landscape had changed considerably. The telegraph poles were so close to each other that they looked like a hedge, and the trees had extremely narrow crowns and were like Italian cypresses.