His Majesty Baby and Some Common PeopleMaclaren, Ian
General
His Majesty Baby and Some Common People
Maclaren, Ian
Fiction; Short stories
If a slow-witted and slow-moving Englishman desires a liberal education,
let him take a journey of a month on the steam cars in the United
States. No train in Europe travels as fast as certain American
expresses, and if other trains go slower it is a matter of thankfulness,
because they are less likely to kill passengers on level crossings, or
in the main streets of the city along which they take their way, and
cattle have more time to get off the unprotected tracks. As trains have
also a trick of jumping the rails, either through the rails spreading
or the eccentricity of the engine, both being instances of exuberant
national vitality, it is just as well that every express does not go at
the rate of the Empire State Express on the New York Central. Nowhere
in Europe can a traveller find stronger or handsomer cars, and they are
marvels of adaptability and convenience. There is a dining car, in
order that you may not lose time at a station, and also, which is not
unimportant, in order that you may be able to occupy your time with
something practical on the train. Of course, there is a smoking
compartment, where men can compare notes upon politics and business, and
be able to escape from idleness and themselves. The best expresses
have a reading car, where the American can pick up such morsels of
information from the magazines as he can contain between the interstices
of business. There is a desk where he can read his letters, and
a typewriter to answer them, for this train is the American's
sleep-ing-place and dining-place, and his home and his office. One thing
only he regrets; the train, as it flies along, is not connected with
the telegraph and the telephone, so that, as an idea occurs to him or
he obtains a hint from a man in the smoking car, he might be able to do
business with his correspondents in Chicago or San Francisco. While
an Englishman on a railway journey is generally dressed in roughly and
loosely fitting tweeds, suggestive of a country life and of sport,
the coat of his American cousin is of dark material and has not a
superfluous inch of cloth. From his collar to his neat little boot the
American is prim, spick-and-span, and looks as if he had come out of a
band-box and were ready to appear in the principal room of any office.
He is dressed in fact for business, and looks like business from
the crown of his head to the sole of his feet, while an Englishman's
appearance suggests that he is going to see a cricket match or that he
has retired to live upon a farm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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