I Travel by Train | Page 3

train in South Station.
It is not so much of a station, as stations come and go, and it is
surrounded by an atmosphere of leather, wool, roasting coffee, and
dank sea water. But the traveler who is not too much in social bondage
knows that it has its advantages. The sleeping-car is there in readiness
twenty minutes before leaving time. It immediately quiets the nerves to
go into a car that is standing as if it meant to stay. And it increases a
man's self-respect to walk to his space, see his luggage slipped under
the berth, and then sit in the calm of green upholstery for ten minutes
just as if only a half-hour before he had not been raging at everybody
because his shirts had been smudged in the laundry. I had done pretty
well in packing up and so had my wife. I could think of nothing at all

that I had left behind. Yet I pretended that I thought of something. Yes,
it was something that would justify me in going to the rear of the train
to telephone back to the house. I wanted my wife to hear me say in
perfectly restrained voice that I was there and settled and all ready to
go.
Even if it does sound like writing a testimonial for somebody, I must
confess that I enjoy this traveling on a train. For a journey, as I like to
think of it, consists not only of getting there, but of going. In the course
of a week, a month, I shall be able to use all my spare time in seeing
what kind of country it is that I live in.
Immediately, too, I began to see it. For within five minutes after the
engineer had given us the none-too-gentle jerk which assured us that
we were on our way, we were coming into the Back Bay Station.
Crowds of competently dressed men and women with dogs and
children were saying good-bye on the platform. No fringes of any other
classes of people were in sight. It was--and always is America's best
cross-section of a Brahmin population. In a crisp atmosphere that is a
blending of the acquisitive and the intellectual, they are at perfect ease
among themselves. Their language on such occasions, when they speak
a little excitedly as if they were doing something unusual, has a
flavoring that is more European than American. It is not precisely
British the British would be the first to tell you so yet there is in it
something that is more like Charing Cross or Bowness than Broad
Street or Mackinac.
Only a few of them came into the car. They usually stick so close to the
Atlantic seaboard that it is unnecessary for them to take a sleeper
except on those rare occasions when they go to Washington, and those
rarer ones when they go to Miami. When they are sailing from New
York they can ride down in a parlor-car. Yet when the last redcap had
rushed from the starting train, our passenger list in the sleeper had been
increased. In front of me was a little girl of four with her mother. They
were going to Elizabeth, New Jersey, and thought a section in the
sleeping-car would be more comfortable for so long a journey. Across
the aisle a boy of six and his mother adjusted their belongings for a trip

as far as Newark, Ohio. The mother was not a Bostonian; she had only
married one.
I felt perturbed. I had had in mind looking over some jottings. There
might not be great quiet. But I fortified myself. I like children. I
recalled proudly how I had always been able to work with children
playing--though not fighting--right beneath my window in Cambridge.
And the little girl smiled at me with great blue eyes round the corner of
her high-backed seat.
The boy saw her smile, and felt that he must participate. But he was
less subtle. He walked over and wanted to know what my name was,
and where I was going. His mother, who tried to look unadorned and
sheer, very mildly reprimanded him. Then he asked the little girl. Soon
they were playing in the aisle and looking out at my window, and the
two mothers were discussing education or rather, schools. The boy
began a demonstration of what his school had already done for him by
swinging between his seat and mine and turning flip-flops to the
constantly accelerated accompaniment of a school chant. Then he
began to yell very rhythmically as if he had learned that through
teaching, also. I began to feel the least bit caged in. Instead of looking
at my jottings, I concentrated on what was outside my window. The
blueberry bushes