If the timecard said our train would reach a given
point at a given hour, and this was the given hour, then we might
be pretty sure this was the given point. Timetables in England
are written by realists, not by gifted fiction writers of the
impressionistic school, as is frequently the case in America.
So, if this timecard says it is time for you to get off you get
off, with your ticket still in your possession; and if it be a
small station you go yourself and look up the station master, who
is tucked away in a secluded cubbyhole somewhere absorbing tea,
or else is in the luggage room fussing with baby carriages and
patentchurns. Having ferreted him out in his hiding-place you
hand over your ticket to him and he touches his cap brim and says
"Kew" very politely, which concludes the ceremony so far as you
are concerned.
Then, if you have brought any heavy baggage with you in the baggage
car - pardon, I meant the luggage van - you go back to the platform
and pick it out from the heap of luggage that has been dumped there
by the train hands. With ordinary luck and forethought you could
easily pick out and claim and carry off some other person's trunk,
provided you fancied it more than your own trunk, only you do not.
You do not do this any more than, having purchased a second-class
ticket, or a third-class, you ride first-class; though, so far as
I could tell, there is no check to prevent a person from so doing.
At least an Englishman never does. It never seems to occur to
him to do so. The English have no imagination.
I have a suspicion that if one of our railroads tried to operate
its train service on such a basis of confidence in the general
public there would be a most deceitful hiatus in the receipts from
passenger traffic to be reported to a distressed group of stockholders
at the end of the fiscal year. This, however, is merely a supposition
on my part. I may be wrong.
Chapter XVII
Britain in Twenty Minutes
To a greater degree, I take it, than any other race the English
have mastered the difficult art of minding their own affairs. The
average Englishman is tremendously knowledgable about his own
concerns and monumentally ignorant about all other things. If an
Englishman's business requires that he shall learn the habits and
customs of the Patagonians or the Chicagoans or any other race
which, because it is not British, he naturally regards as barbaric,
he goes and learns them - and learns them well. Otherwise your
Britisher does not bother himself with what the outlander may or
may not do.
