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Title: The Rome Express

Author: Arthur Griffiths

Release Date: March 5, 2004 [EBook #11451]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: "_M. Flocon interposed with uplifted hand_."]

The ROME EXPRESS

By Arthur Griffiths


With a frontispiece in colours
By Arthur O. Scott

1907

THE ROME EXPRESS


CHAPTER I

The Rome Express, the _direttissimo_, or most direct, was approaching
Paris one morning in March, when it became known to the occupants of the
sleeping-car that there was something amiss, very much amiss, in the
car.

The train was travelling the last stage, between Laroche and Paris, a
run of a hundred miles without a stop. It had halted at Laroche for
early breakfast, and many, if not all the passengers, had turned out. Of
those in the sleeping-car, seven in number, six had been seen in the
restaurant, or about the platform; the seventh, a lady, had not stirred.
All had reentered their berths to sleep or doze when the train went on,
but several were on the move as it neared Paris, taking their turn at
the lavatory, calling for water, towels, making the usual stir of
preparation as the end of a journey was at hand.

There were many calls for the porter, yet no porter appeared. At last
the attendant was found--lazy villain!--asleep, snoring loudly,
stertorously, in his little bunk at the end of the car. He was roused
with difficulty, and set about his work in a dull, unwilling, lethargic
way, which promised badly for his tips from those he was supposed to
serve.

By

Arthur Griffiths is a former owner of the Vancouver Canucks and General Motors Place and is responsible for putting the Vancouver 2010 Olympic bid together. On May 20, 2008, he announced plans to run for the Liberal nomination for the Vancouver-West End provincial riding.[1]

Various, or Various Production, is an English dubstep/electronic music duo formed in 2003. The group blends samples, acoustic and electronic instrumentation, and singing from a revolving cast of vocalists. Its members, Adam and Ian, purposefully give very little information about the group or themselves, and tend to do little in the way of self-promotion.[1] Nevertheless, the group began winning critical acclaim with its single releases in 2005 and 2006.[2] Their full-length for XL, The World is Gone, arrived in July of 2006.[3][4][5][6][7] They have released a large number of vinyl EPs and 7 records, as well as digital exclusives for Rough Trade, iTunes, and Boomkat.[8]

Alfred Binet (July 8, 1857 October 18, 1911), French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test, the basis of todays IQ test. Born in Nice, Binet was a French psychologist who published the first modern intelligence test, the Binet-Simon intelligence scale, in 1905. His principal goal was to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum. Along with his collaborator Thodore Simon, Binet published revisions of his intelligence scale in 1908 and 1911, the last appearing just before his untimely death. A further refinement of the Binet-Simon scale was published in 1916 by Lewis M. Terman, from Stanford University, who incorporated the German psychologist William Sterns proposal that an individuals intelligence level be measured as an intelligence quotient (I.Q.). Termans test, which he named the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale formed the basis for one of the modern intelligence tests still commonly used today. They are all colloquiall