The man interrupted him. "Wot's a toob for?" he said. He answered his own question. "To travel by. Well, you can travel by it. Wot more du want?"
"But I thought it would be exciting!..."
"An' 'oo the 'ell wants excitement in a toob!" the man answered.
John considered the matter for a moment or two. "I expect you're right," he said, and then, more briskly, added, "Yes, of course. Of course, you're right. Travelling in a train would not be pleasant if it were exciting."
"It would not," the man answered.
"But it sounded such an extraordinary thing, a Tube, when I read about it that I expected to see something different," John continued.
"Well, it is an extraordinary thing," the man said. "You walk down them steps there, an' get into a lift, an' wot'll 'appen to you? You'll be dropped 'undreds of feet into the earth, an' when you get ta the bottom, you'll find trains runnin' by electricity. I call that extraordinary, if you down't ... only I down't want to myke a song abaht it!"
John felt that he had been rebuked for an excess of enthusiasm. The Englishman was right about the Tube. It was a wonderful thing, more wonderful, perhaps, because of the quietness of its approach: it would not be any more wonderful if people were to go about the town uttering shouts of astonishment over it, nor was it any less wonderful because the English people treated it as if it were an ordinary affair.
He looked across the road at the Bank of England, devoid equally of dignity and sensation, and then turned and looked at the Royal Exchange. A pigeon flew up from the ground and perched among the figures carved over the portico, and as he watched it, he read the inscription beneath the figure of Justice: The Earth is the Lord's and the Fullness Thereof.
"Dear me!" he said, turning away again.