One morning the Professor, whom I had not seen since I left Tennessee, accidentally unearthed me in London and proposed that we should visit Windsor. Now, I may as well confess to defective initiative, in regard to sight-seeing, for I had been within reach of Windsor on several former occasions and had not yet seen the home of the most gracious queen the world has ever known. This, too, in face of the fact that a German professor had assured me that Windsor was “himmlisch.” When a German so far forgets himself as to say that anything English is “heavenly,” be assured he has great provocation.
WINDSOR CASTLE FROM THE THAMES.
Of course, I acceded without hesitation to the Professor’s proposal and we selected a train, appointed a rendezvous, and agreed to go the following morning.
The Professor’s traveling companion was a “blue grass” doctor of divinity, while I was courier, guide, and advance agent to the “delegate,” sent by his admiring countrymen and brethren to unload some ecclesiastical “thunder and lightning” on their conservative confrères in the old land. The “delegate’s” wife was traveling with him as a sort of balance wheel on his too impetuous energy and to see that he was not imposed on by the overbearing foreigner; she was not averse to a little vigorous sight-seeing when otherwise unemployed. They also joined the party, which was completed by “Wee McGregor,” as the eight-year-old was called, who looked to me for his traveling expenses.
Having visited London before, and being possessed of an unearned reputation as a dragoman, I felt it was incumbent on me to show the party the best and quickest way to reach Windsor. Accordingly I hailed one of those obsolete conveyances which the London City Fathers provide for the traveler, to whom the conservation of energy is of more moment than arriving at a destination.
In due time, somewhat shaken but still in good humor, for the day was yet young, we arrived at King’s Cross station on the Metropolitan Railway, better known by the more modest and suggestive title of the “Underground.” “Here,” I had said to the prospective sightseers, “we shall get a train that will connect direct and without change at Paddington station with the train for Windsor.” This was all true except the “without change” clause. For this slight deviation from strict veracity I have no apology to make. Indeed, I doubt whether I am entitled to play the role of guide while so generous with the truth.
I kept my tourists “rounded up” and prevented them from embarking in various directions. As there were trains passing every two or three minutes it seemed a waste of time not to take one and I had, as a consequence, a very busy quarter of an hour. At last our train came, and, after rushing madly up and down the platform the entire length of the train, we found places, though in different “stalls.”
When an American train arrives at a station you go in and find a seat. When an English train, especially of the old style which is now happily disappearing, arrives, you must first find a seat and then go in. You trail up and down the platform and poke your nose into every compartment answering to the class for which you have purchased tickets. Here is one with two or three places vacant, but you have a party of four, and as they are strangers in the country, you must keep them together to ensure their alighting at the right place. Besides you naturally want to be within speaking distance of one another. So you start back again to the other end of the train, terrified every moment lest the engineer grow weary of your bootless explorations, and decide to start. Ah! Here is a vacant apartment at last, but just as you are about to step in with a light heart you notice that it is marked “first class” and unfortunately you are not a millionaire. You continue your search and find eventually a vacant apartment of the class in which you are entitled to ride. Your troubles are now ended; your party is seated; your impedimenta are laboriously stowed away in the racks, when, with envious nonchalance, enters a smoker armed with a little cigarette that vomits smoke like a factory chimney. The ladies are indignant; you rack your brain for something sufficiently withering to say, and just as you are ready to deliver, you notice, faintly etched on the window, the word “smoking.” Now, if you were traveling in Austria, you would give the “guard” a quarter to remove the label with the offensive word, and would settle back virtuously into the leather cushions, but here, while the English guard would be equally obliging—for a like “bakshish”—it is a more serious matter to remove the door or window. In the meantime you have left the smoker in quiet possession to fill the vacant space with clouds of the fragrant weed. In despair you apply to the guard and when you appropriately recognize his importance, he finds you a place in a moment.
The stations on the “Underground” are open to the surface and are light and airy, but when the train plunges under London, and the compartment fills up with the gases, that have been accumulating down here for the past thirty years, you realize that traveling on the “Underground” does not differ widely from suicide by slow asphyxiation.