Through the school: The experiences of a mill boy in securing an educationBrown, Frederic Kenyon
Philosophy
Through the school: The experiences of a mill boy in securing an education
Brown, Frederic Kenyon
Education
At ten o’clock the lights of Montreal, strings of stars, flashed by
the windows. Three miles away from the station the passengers became
restless. Some of them stood up and waited during all that time. At
last the brakeman called out with finality, a downward deflection of
the last syllable, as if that ended his day, “Mon-tree-AL!”
There my ticket told me I should have to change. The next stage of my
journey would take me along the border of Canada as far as Detroit; an
all-night journey.
During the hour that I had to wait in Montreal, I went on a thrilling,
timid sight-seeing. I recollect to have seen a couple of dim-lit
business streets, silent, ghostly, a couple of buildings which must
have been structures of importance in daylight, and a sign which could
be read because it was directly in the glare of an arc light, “National
Bank.” Having seen so much, and satisfied my provincial soul on so
spare a meal, I went back to get on my new train.
I found myself in a most comfortable car. The seat was well padded,
the back was high enough to serve for a pillow, and there was no one
in the seat in front. So I turned over that seat, took off my coat and
hat, unlaced my shoes and put them on one side, leaned back with a sigh
of content, ready for a night’s rest when--the conductor came down the
aisle, looked at my ticket, and said, “This is a first-class car and
you have a second class ticket. The next car ahead, sir!”
I slung my coat over my arm, picked up my shoes and suit-case and went
into the car ahead. It was a Tourist Sleeping car and was filled,
largely, with a medley of Europeans. Europeans, too, with peasant
manners, with peasant dirt and peasant breath. There was odor of garlic
mixed with odor of stale rye bread, as some ate lunches. There was odor
of unwashed clothes mixed with odor of sour milk. Double seats, leather
padded, had been pushed together into berths, while overhead shelves
had been let down for upper berths, with thin pads of mattress for the
colonists to find rest upon. The aisles were littered with paper, fruit
remnants, broken cigarette stubs, empty bottles, and expectoration. The
air was vapid, like a drunkard’s breath. I waded through it all to the
lower end of the car where there seemed to be an oasis of cleanliness
and order. Here, though, were men sprawled out in unpoetic postures of
sleep. At the lowest end, even the train boy had left his basket of
fruit and soda on one side, while he lay for the night, crumpled up,
snorting like a pig.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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