*Porters, Pullmans and Patience*
The luxury of modern travel is a thing one often hears spoken about
nowadays. Personally, we have had to listen to it for so long, and we
are so heartily convinced that it is a piece of arrant humbug, that we
are finally moved to protest. "The luxury of modern travel"--pish tush,
and again pish! There ain't no such thing.
Travel may not have been luxurious, but it was at least interesting in
the good old days of the mail-coaches. We like to think of them rolling
with a tremendous clatter of hoofs and a flourish on the guard's horn
through grey villages dozing among their elms, right up to the doors of
glorious old inns where the hostlers tumbled out with fresh horses and
journeying gentlemen tumbled in for a glass of mulled port.
That was travelling, bless you! There was some sport to that, some
exhilaration. A man might well be moved to song on the top of one of
those old coaches of a fine spring morning with the hedge-rows all in
tender green. Even we ourself, who have a voice that causes people to
turn around and scowl when we join in a chorus, even we might be led to
troll a rollicking catch under such circumstances as that.
But who ever heard of anyone singing in a Pullman car--unless it should
be a traveller in the smoking-room who had travelled not wisely but too
well? And even those days are past now. Singing isn't done, that's all.
There is no excuse for it, except inebriety or a brainstorm--and we have
ruled out inebriety, more or less. Besides, the man who manages to get
an extra Scotch or so nowadays doesn't make a fuss about it. He keeps
the fact a dark and happy secret. So, instead of singing in a Pullman
car, one simply sits and grouches until that blessed moment of release
when the porter has brushed all the dust off one's coat into one's eye,
and one can seize one's grip and totter out into the open air once more.
The misery of modern travel starts from the moment the traveller, laden
with disheveled impediments of all sorts, plunges madly out of the house
watch in hand--this is difficult but it can be done--to the taxicab
which has come just twenty minutes late. The driver says it is because
the people at the garage gave him the wrong address, the intimation
being that he had finally arrived at the right one by some process of
complicated and inspired ratiocination. The real truth is that he
stopped to talk to a "ladifren."
Personally, we plunge out and catch a streetcar. We are a democratic
cuss. Also they don't make one wait so long. Moreover, it is so
exciting to stand on the back platform and pull out one's watch--it is
ten minutes fast, though one doesn't suspect it--and break into a cold
sweat every time anyone stops the car either to get on or off.
The car-line we usually take crosses railroad-tracks in two or three
places. This may seem to the reader an irrelevant detail, but it
wouldn't seem so if the reader had to take it. Invariably when one is
in a bigger hurry than usual, a shunting-engine and a crew of leisurely
fiends in dingy overalls are engaged in chivvying a bunch of
freight-cars backwards and forwards over the crossing, while one notes
the second-hand of one's watch slipping merrily around and one mentally
calls on all the lurid reserves of language.
Rushing into the depot--dear reader, did you ever rush into the Toronto
Union Depot? Did you ever sprint madly, with your bag banging against
your knees, down that interminable corridor--it seems a mile and a half
long at the very least--from the main entrance to the door where a cool
ruffian in a uniform insists on stopping you and seeing your ticket,
though you have just four seconds to catch your train and you know on
what track it is just as well as he does? And when you have finally got
by him, did you ever slide down one of those flights of iron steps into
that damp and dismal tunnel where the trains stand? If you have ever
done any of these things, you can sympathize with us when we repeat with
an intonation of melancholy contempt, "The luxury of modern travel!"
But somehow or other in a fashion which strengthens our belief in a
kindly Providence, we catch the train. We always do. Just as the
porter picks up his little stool and climbs aboard, we hurl ourself and
our bag into the vestibule after him. Then, when the conductor and
brakeman have lifted us off our ebony brother in livery, we are shown to
our berth. Removing our overcoat and picking out of our bag a book and
such cigars as have not been reduced to fine-cut, we adjourn to the
smoking-room.
There is a general notion, principally among ladies, that the
smoking-room of a sleeping-car is a place of extraordinary hilarity and
indecorous enjoyment. They have visions of men sitting around in their
shirt-sleeves playing poker, drinking out of pocket-flasks, and
exchanging amid clouds of smoke stories that would make even the porter
blush. But, alas, it is not thus.
Our own experience of Pullman smoking-rooms is that they are the dullest
holes on earth. The smoke is there all right, dense clouds of it. And
such smoke!--any old thing that will burn, native shag, Turkish
cigarettes, five-cent cigars, pipes of every age and degree of
disrepute, all mixed up together. But of conversation there is none,
except when a couple of commercial travellers start a competition in
mendacity as to the number of orders they have taken in the towns along
the line. As for stories--we haven't heard a new one yet.
So far as cards are concerned, we once saw a man play solitaire. And on
two or three occasions in the more convivial past, crude but friendly
souls have drawn from hip-pockets pint-flasks which they have timidly
proffered by way of brightening the general gloom. We always hated to
refuse--exhibitions of hospitality were so rare there. If an African
chief came in and wanted to rub noses--we believe that is the usual
expression of friendly interest in Ashantee--we would hardly have had
the heart to decline.
About midnight, when one has no decent excuse for putting it off any
longer--especially as the porter, who sleeps in the smoking-room, comes
in and scowls every few minutes until one gives it up to him--we drag
ourself to our berth. That is, we stow ourself away in a dark
cubby-hole, too short for us by three inches actual measurement, and
just high enough to bruise the top of our head every time we sit up.
There we proceed to divest ourself of our garments and lay them away in
places where they will fall down on our face at intervals during the
night--the intervals being whenever we start to doze.
We would like to go into the details of our divestiture, with a view to
comparing notes with other tall gentlemen who have been compelled to
remove their habiliments--mentionable and otherwise--within the confines
of a berth. In view, however, of the somewhat intimate nature of the
case, we are obliged to let it go with the general statement that the
performance is a highly acrobatic one. We get our things off somehow or
other--probably we give anyone coming along the aisle the impression
that a sea-lion or a dromedary has got into our compartment. And then,
our final frantic struggle having made us free, we address ourself to
sleep.
Sleeping-cars are so named because you try to and can't. Some people
can, of course. When they can, they always snore--fiendishly.
Invariably there is a man across the aisle with one of those
going-down-for-the-third-time snores, the kind that suggest a muffled
shriek of agony. All night long you keep hoping against hope that he is
really strangling. But he never is. Next morning he always bobs up
smiling and rubicund, and informs everyone in the wash-room that he
slept like a top--meaning, of course, a racing automobile with the
muffler cut out.
Somehow the night goes by. It is one of the melancholy compensations of
life that everything passes. Just about dawn you drop off into the
first decent nap you have been able to get; and twenty minutes later the
porter reaches in and punches you in the ribs or pounds on the roof of
the berth to let you know it is time you were up. As a matter of fact,
you have a full hour or more before you arrive. But he believes in
getting people up early. It gives him a chance to roll up the berths
and stow them out of sight in the mysterious recesses the Lord and Mr.
Pullman have provided for that purpose. Besides, it is a display of
authority, and this is always dear to the porteresque heart--most
people's hearts, in fact.
So you sit up suddenly and bang your head. Being thus thoroughly
awakened, you glance out of the window and study the fence-posts or the
clay banks past which you are speeding. Then you poke a frowsy head
into the aisle through the curtains, and promptly drag it back as a
large lady in a flowered kimona bears down upon you with an angry glare.
It is obvious that she thinks you have been sitting there for half an
hour peeping into the aisle till you could get that chance to look at
her in her dishabille. Naturally you can't explain. What is there to
say? Least of all can you tell her the simple truth, which is that if
you had known anything like that was prowling around the car you
wouldn't have peeped out for a flock of limousines--or should it be
"covey?"
Will someone kindly tell us, will someone please explain, why it is
ladies assume that frigidly severe attitude when anyone happens to look
at them during their matutinal parades up and down the aisle? If we
ourself catch anyone glancing at us while we meander towards the
wash-room with our toothbrush and our other collar--anyone, that is, of
the opposite sex, and it is surprising how very opposite some of them
are--we merely blush in simple-hearted confusion. We may wonder why the
lady should look at us. But it would never occur to us to be indignant
over the matter, not even if we were wearing a flowered kimona and
carried our toilet tools in a cute little silk bag.
In the wash-room you stand for half an hour behind a row of gentlemen
with their heads in basins. Every now and then one comes up to breathe,
and then he goes down again for another five minutes during which he
throws soap-suds all over you. When finally you manage to get a basin
yourself, the car gives a sudden lurch and it empties itself gracefully
into your lap.
When you have contrived at last to wiggle into your clothes--they always
look as if you had spent the night tying knots in them--you go back and
sit on the end of your suit-case in the aisle, or somebody else's
suit-case, while the porter brushes everybody in sight and takes a
quarter away from each of them. We don't mind the quarter. We'd gladly
give much more than that if he would only leave us alone. But he won't.
He fixes us with his shiny eye; he beckons to us; and we walk away down
the aisle to meet him. There he turns our coat-collar back, sifts an
ounce or two of coal-dust down our neck, deftly blows the rest of it
into our ear, knocks our hat all out of shape, seizes the coin which we
feverishly proffer him as the price of our deliverance, and then drops
us for the next victim.
"Montreal--this way out!"
One staggers painfully from the car down to the station platform. There
a horde of "red caps" descend upon you in a flying phalanx. Taking your
luggage and your breath at the same time, they vanish, only to reappear
ten minutes later at the station door--you have just about decided they
have absconded with your bags--and there they demand salvage for them.
"The luxury of modern travel"--O Lord!
[Illustration: HELPING OUR FRIENDS TO ECONOMIZE]
*Helping our Friends to Economize*
We are of a saving nature. We say this more in sorrow than in pride.
It has been forced on us. We have saved stamps and cigar-bands. We
have saved cigarette pictures and theatre programmes. We have even made
sporadic endeavors to save our soul. For the past few months especially
our gaze has been fixed on the skies. We had hoped that once the
fighting was over--but peace hath her battles no less than war. So we
turn our eyes to those celestial abodes where the Bolsheviki cease from
troubling. Our only hope is in heaven. In fact, even a nice, quiet
corner in hell--but, hush, let us not think of such things!
When we speak, however, of our saving nature, we refer principally, if
not exclusively, to money. We have a disposition to save money. We
would like to put away huge jars of it. We would enjoy sneaking down to
the vault in the middle of the night to count our gold and gloat over
it. We would do it even at the risk of getting our new pyjamas all
dirtied up with gold-dust.
Not that we have ever been able to accumulate any vast amount of coin,
specie, mazuma, cush, dust, rhino, bullion, long green--in short, money.
No trust companies grow plethoric with our securities. No vaults strain
at their rivets with our lacs of rupees. But the disposition is there
on our part. We would save if we had the wherewithal.
That is why we have such a kindly feeling for others who are trying to
save--especially now when the high cost of living has combined with the
high cost of killing, as represented in war-taxation, to put such a
crimp in a fellow's income that it looks like a French pea to a famished
ostrich. That is why we never feel aggrieved when our friends don't
invite us to dinner, or give us cold mutton or stew when they do. That
is why we never make any remarks on the age of their hats or complain of
the cold in their houses or express wonder that they don't light the
furnace sooner. They are cutting down expenses and we sympathize with
them.
We like to see people save. We smile benignly, as one who murmurs,
"Bless you, children," when we catch them laying by for a rainy day. We
believe in economy. At the same time, it should not be carried to
extravagant lengths--at least, not at our expense. We are willing to
help our friends to economize, but there are reasonable limits. They
must not crowd the kindly mourner too far.
For instance, there is Binks--awfully nice chap, Binks. You must know
him, short, fairly stout, wears lavender ties, and rides down to the
office every morning on the rear platform of the street-car for the sake
of the air. Great fellow for hygiene is Binks. Plays a good game of
tennis, too.
Binks invited us over to dinner one Saturday not long ago.
"Tell you what," said Binks in his buoyant way, "come on over
early--say, about two o'clock--and we'll walk out to my new lot in the
West Annex if it's a fine day and get back in nice time for dinner.
Great for the appetite--you'll feel like a prize-fighter after you've
strolled around through the woods for a few hours."
It sounded good, and the day was fine, and we were there at two
sharp--difficult as it is for us to be anywhere at anything sharp. We
were neatly but inconspicuously clad in our walking clothes, Norfolk
jacket, green hat, and pipe. We also wore a tan cane and chamois
gloves. Nothing elaborate, you know, but grace in every line.
Binks, on the contrary, had on the worst suit we have ever seen out of
the furnace room. A greasy old peak-cap reposed on his head, and his
trousers were patched and frayed. We didn't mind that. We are not
snobbish. But we did object to the tools.
Binks had a cross-cut saw, a sledge-hammer weighing approximately twelve
pounds, an axe, and two steel wedges weighing about five pounds each.
We looked long and hard at them, and longer and harder at Binks. He had
the grace to blush.
"I hope you don't mind, old man," he said with affected lightness, "but
there's a bit of a tree fallen down on the lot, and I thought it would
be good sport to cut it up this afternoon. Great exercise, you
know--brings all the muscles of the back into play. Besides, the wood
will come in handy in the grate this winter. Stringency, you see--got to
save every penny these times, eh, what?"
We are weak. We gulped once or twice, but what was there to say? We
could do nothing but fall in with the plan, and let on that we were
overjoyed at the prospect of bringing the muscles of our back into play.
It did occur to us, however, that there might be jollier methods of
doing so than cutting up fallen trees.
"You better carry the saw," said Binks, "it's light. I'll pack the rest
of the stuff--unless you could carry one of the wedges. It's only a
short way to the car, you know."
It was only a short way to the car, true enough. But, friend the reader,
have you ever tried to carry a cross-cut saw? This particular one was
about six feet long, and it had a full set of two-inch teeth, the
suppleness of a boa-constrictor, and the temper of a worried weasel. It
was simply a long thin band of steel with a heavy wooden handle at each
end and enough elasticity to curl around you twice and reach up and bite
the top off either ear.
The instant that we put the infernal saw oh our shoulder we realized
that we had made a mistake. It slashed around in the air a couple of
times to get the exact range, and then it dived down and chewed a neat
triangular piece out of our trouser-leg. It would probably have kept
right on through our own leg, if we had not by some happy chance or
unconscious skill managed to get our cane in the way. This saved the
leg, to which we not unnaturally attach a certain value, but it was the
last of a very fine piece of malacca. That ferocious saw gnashed its
teeth just once, and there were two canes where only one had grown
before--two nice little canes each about twenty inches long and cut
somewhat on the bias.
This was only a starter. In two seconds that saw had us tied up in a
complicated knot, with one handle gouging us just under the left ear,
and the other playfully wandering about our frame, while the teeth
nipped off exposed pieces of cuticle here and there in an arbitrary and
capricious manner. When we got a chance to examine ourself that night
in the chaste seclusion of the boudoir, we looked as if we had been tied
up in the cellar and the mice had got at us.
We shrieked to Binks to pull the thing off us. After some time and
effort--also a few light casualties of his own--he finally did manage to
extricate what was left of us. We were going to quit on the spot. We
told Binks so with what he must have regarded as a great deal of
unnecessary emphasis. But he is a very persuasive cuss, and--well, as
we said before, we are weak. We consented to see the thing through. But
we declined firmly to carry that saw another foot of the way. We
finally compromised, however, and each took a handle. It was awkward
but safe enough. The thing bucked occasionally and made frantic efforts
to jump on one or other of us; but we held it tight and we got it to the
car without further bloodshed.
When we tumbled on board, the conductor took one good look at our
equipment and immediately became distinctly unpleasant. He asked us if
we had mistaken the car for a motor-lorry, and whether or not we
intended to bring a few trees along, too. He said it seemed too bad to
leave them behind when there was all that room in the aisle. He also
suggested that we should put the saw on the roof and let the handles
hang down at each end of the car--he said it was less likely to kill
anyone up there.
Our position was most embarrassing--even Binks almost lost his temper,
though that wouldn't have done any good. The worst of it was that the
passengers seemed to consider the vulgar brute funny, while we couldn't
think of anything crushing to say in reply till we had got off and the
car was blocks away. Then we realized that we should have said--but
perhaps we had better save this up. We may need it some day.
We reached the lot at last after tramping through so-called woodland
scenery for miles and miles. The landscape was a tumbled stretch of
scrubby bush which had never been fit for anything once the original big
trees had been cut off. So a soulless real-estate agent had sliced it
up into suburban lots and sold it to enthusiastic asses like our friend
Binks. Twenty years from now it will, no doubt, be a thriving and even
fashionable suburb, but not now--Lord, no! It is possible, however,
that we are somewhat prejudiced against this particular landscape. Who
can enjoy scenery while tramping through it with a twelve-pound sledge,
a five-pound wedge, and the handle of a cross-cut saw--sounds almost
like a refrain, doesn't it?
How the mischief Binks was able to tell his own lot in that wilderness
will always remain a marvel to us. But he picked it out all right, and
there, sure enough, was the tree. It was the biggest, knottiest,
meanest-looking jack-oak we have seen in years. No wonder the lightning
struck it. The only wonder is that it didn't burn it right up.
"Isn't she a beauty?" gloated Binks insanely. "Won't those gnarled logs
crackle fine in the grate this winter?"
We looked at him in gloomy wonder. Did the poor idiot think we were
going to help dissect that ligneous monstrosity entirely? We didn't
mind cutting off a limb or two, but no more--not in one day. Little did
we suspect the fate that was hanging over us.
"And now to work," said Binks with the imbecile cheerfulness of his
kind. "We'll cut this old rascal into handy lengths in a couple of
hours or so, and then the carter will come along with the team, and
we'll ride home on the load--just like one of those old pictures of
forest-life, you I know."
But we were in no mood to enthuse. Slowly and sadly we pulled off our
Norfolk jacket and folded it neatly. We turned a wistful and lingering
regard on the landscape; and then we betook us dismally to our toil. We
were helpless in the grip of Bink's will, a regular slave of the lamp.
That afternoon will remain a nightmare for years to come. Whenever
after this we go into gilded dens of folly and eat lobster _a la
Newburg_, whenever we commit indiscretions with mince-pie or home-made
whiskey, we know the form our penitential dreams will take. We will see
ourself standing at one end of that awful saw with Binks at the other,
and we will go on forever and ever shoving the saw away from us and
pulling it back again through a cast-iron log with Bessemer-steel knots,
which will shriek in agony at every stroke. And Binks will be wearing a
red suit of tights and a pair of cute little horns and a spiked tail.
It was a terrible experience. What Binks said about bringing our back
muscles into play was perfectly true. We brought them into play with a
vengeance. We brought into play muscles that we never dreamed of
possessing. But we didn't like the way they played. There was
something very rough about it.
The shades of night fell softly upon us, and still we sawed. The
hoot-owls hooted at us in derision, but still that fiendish saw rasped
on. In the beginning we had suggested rest a few times, but Binks
merely assured us that once we got our second wind we would be all
right.
We got our second wind, but it wasn't long before we used it up. Then
we called out our third line of reserves, our pulmonary landsturm, so to
speak, and we exhausted that, too. By the time we finally quit we were
using only the extreme upper lobe of each lung, and all we could do was
to gasp and hang on to the handle of the saw lest the thing should leap
at us and sink its teeth in our jugular.
Finally Binks stopped. We had cut through the last knot of the last
limb of the last length of that interminable trunk--by this time it
seemed seven miles long. Binks stopped, and we fell in our tracks. We
dropped where we stood, right there in the saw-dust.
"Tell you what," said Binks mopping his brow--we could barely see him in
the darkness--"tell you what, there is nothing like this fine, simple,
open-air life to make a fellow feel like a king."
The creature was inexorable. His remark was a gratuitous insult; but we
were beyond the desire or even the possibility of reply. We could only
lie there on our back and look up longingly at the stars, and think how
mother used to steal in and kiss us in our little white cot, and how
horrified Binks would be when he discovered that we were dying.
"Great Jumping Jee-hosophat!" shouted Binks a moment later. He had
struck a match and looked at his watch. "It's a quarter to eight, and
we were to have been back at dinner at seven. And that damn carter
hasn't come yet!"