But, To The Notice Of The American Who Is Paying Them
His First Visit, They Certainly Do Offer Some Amazing Contradictions.
In the large matters of business the English have been accused of
trickiness, which, however, may be but the voice of envious
competition speaking; but in the small things they surely are most
marvelously honest.
Consider their railroad trains now: To a
greenhorn from this side the blue water, a railroad journey out
of London to almost any point in rural England is a succession of
surprises, and all pleasant ones. To begin with, apparently there
is nobody at the station whose business it is to show you to your
train or to examine your ticket before you have found your train
for yourself. There is no mad scurrying about at the moment of
departure, no bleating of directions through megaphones. Unchaperoned
you move along a long platform under a grimy shed, where trains
are standing with their carriage doors hospitably ajar, and
unassisted you find your own train and your own carriage, and
enter therein.
Sharp on the minute an unseen hand - at least I never saw it - slams
the doors and coyly - you might almost say secretively - the train
moves out of the terminal. It moves smoothly and practically
without jarring sounds. There is no shrieking of steel against
steel. It is as though the rails were made of rubber and the
wheel-flanges were faced with noise-proof felt. No conductor comes
to punch your ticket, no brakeman to bellow the stops, no train
butcher bleating the gabbled invoice of his gumdrops, bananas and
other best-sellers.
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