There is not. It was only yesterday that, crossing the meadows on a "local," I found the train pulling up some distance from the village to let an old woman, coming puffing and blowing from a farm-house with a basket on her arm, catch up.
"Well, mother, can she hurry a bit?" spake the conductor when she came within hearing. They address one another in the third person out of a sort of neighborly regard, it appears.
"Now, sonny," responded the old woman, as she lumbered on board, "don't I run as fast as I can?"
"And has she got her fare, now?" queried the conductor.
"Why, no, sonny; how should I have that till I've been in to sell my eggs?" and she held up the basket in token of good faith.
"Well, well," growled the other, "see to it that she doesn't forget to pay it when she comes back." And the train went on.
Time to wait! The deckhand on the ferry-boat lifts his hat and bids you God speed, as you pass. The train waits for the conductor to hear the station-master's account of that last baby and his assurance that the mother is doing well. The laborer goes on strike when his right is questioned to stop work to take his glass of beer between meals; the telegraph messenger, meeting the man for whom he has a message, goes back home with him "to hear the news." It would not be proper to break it in the street. I remember once coming down the chain of lakes in the Jutland peninsula on a steamer that stopped at an out-of-the-way landing where no passengers were in waiting. One, a woman, was made out, though, hastening down a path that lost itself in the woods a long way off. The captain waited. As she stepped aboard another woman appeared in the dim distance, running, too. He blew his whistle to tell her he was waiting, but said nothing. When she was quite near the steamer, a third woman turned into the path, bound, too, for the landing. I looked on in some fear lest the steamboat man should lose his temper at length. But not he. It was only when a fourth and last woman appeared like a whirling speck in the distance, with the three aboard making frantic signals to her to hurry, that he showed signs of impatience. "Couldn't she," he said, with some asperity, as she flounced aboard, "couldn't she get here sooner?"
[Illustration: The Village Express.]
"No," she said, "I couldn't. Didn't you see me run?" And he rang the bell to start the boat.
Time to wait! In New York I have seen men, in the days before the iron gates were put on the ferry-boats, jump when the boat was yet a yard from the landing and run as if their lives depended on it; then, meeting an acquaintance in the street, stop and chat ten minutes with him about nothing. How much farther did they get than these? When all Denmark was torn up last summer by a strike that involved three-fourths of the working population and extended through many months, to the complete blocking of all industries, not a blow was struck or an ill word spoken during all the time, determined as both sides were. No troops or extra police were needed. The strikers used the time to attend university extension lectures, visit museums and learn something useful. The people, including many of the employers, contributed liberally to keep them from starving. It was a war of principles, and it was fought out on that line, though in the end each gave in to something. Yes, it is good, sometimes, to take time to think, even if you cannot wait for the tide to float you off a sandbank. Though what else they could have done, I cannot imagine.