CHAPTER XIX
GETTING THE CITY OUT INTO THE COUNTRY
Commuters’ Trains in Many Towns—Rapid Increase in the Volume of Suburban Travel—Electrification of the Lines—Long Island Railroad Almost Exclusively Suburban—Varied Distances of Suburban Homes from the Cities—Club-cars for Commuters—Staterooms in the Suburban Cars—Special Transfer Commuters.
When the Commuter slams his desk shut at the close of a busy day, he is fully aware that he is a superior being. Other mortals condemned to hard labor in the city may squeeze within the ill-ventilated confines of trolley-car, elevated or subway train, may find their way to stuffy apartments, which, if their fronts were to be suddenly removed, would look for all the world like shoe-boxes stuck tier upon tier in a shop. The Commuter thrusts out his chest. Not for him. His is a different life. He even feels justified in thinking that his is the only life. There is nothing narrow about the Commuter; the open breath of the country has tended to widen him.
He finds his way to the showy railroad terminal, down the crowded concourse with a human stream of other Commuters to the 5:37. That train is part of his regular calendar of life. It has been such ever since he took flight to the country, a dozen years ago. If the 5:37 should ever be stricken from the time-card the Commuter would feel as if the light had been extinguished. Once, when some meddler violently assumed to change it into a 5:31, the Commuter was one of a committee who visited a terrified general passenger agent and had the course of time set right again. There is only one other train which must approach the 5:37 in regularity; that is the 7:52, on which the Commuter slinks sorrowfully into the dirty town each morning. Other trains may be jumped about on the time-card, the Commuter is oblivious of their fate. But let his 7:52 be ten minutes late into the big terminal three mornings in succession, and the Commuter begins to write letters to the papers and to the officers of the railroad.
Once aboard the 5:37 the Commuter trails his way into the smoker. Jim, the brakeman, who is the source of all trustworthy information about the railroad, and who can even foreshadow the resignation of the president, has stored away the table and the cards. They are produced for the daily consideration of a dime and a game that runs week in and week out is ready to begin. Smith, of the Standard Oil crowd, drops into his seat; Higgins, the lawyer, into his; the others are quickly filled; packages—foodstuffs from the cheaper city markets and hurried purchases made at noon from handy shops—go into the racks, and the Commuter is oblivious until, as if by instinct, a familiar red barn goes flying backwards. The game is off again until to-morrow morning; he is sorting his own packages out of the rack. The train halts for a single nervous moment, and he is on the platform. The cars roll past him; the party are at a three-handed game now.
The Commuter finds his way up a steep road to his home on the hillside, his very own home. It looks as sweet, set in there among the bushes and the trees, as it did the day he bought it; and that day it looked to him as Paradise. When night comes, there comes a peace and quiet, a peculiar country coolness in the air. The city is steaming from the hot day, and through the night the pavements and the roofs still emit heat. The Commuter has forgotten the city. He sleeps as he slept as a boy on a farm, where a city was but a hazy dream in his mind. When he awakes he is refreshed, invigorated. The country has repaid him for the trouble that he has taken to reach it. He goes into town again on that blessed 7:52, twice as good a workingman as the man who has the next desk to his, the poor chap who had to sit on the apartment steps until after midnight in order to get even a miserable degree of comfort.
That is why the city goes out into the country.