question; but I remember that when I was a lad I was
told that there was a whole nation that said luggage
instead of baggage, and my boyish mind was filled at
the time with incredulity and scorn. In the present
case it was a thing that I understood to involve the
most hideous confessions of imbecility on my part,
because I had evidently to go out to some obscure point
and espy it and claim it, and take trouble for it;
and I would rather have had my pockets filled with
bread and cheese, and had no baggage at all.
Mind you, this was not at all a homage that I was
paying to London. I was paying homage to a new
game. A man properly lazy does not like new experiences
until they become old ones. Moreover, I have been
taught that a man, any man, who has a thousand times
more points of information on a certain thing than
I have will bully me because of it, and pour his advantages
upon my bowed head until I am drenched with his superiority.
It was in my education to concede some license of the
kind in this case, but the holy father of a porter
and the saintly cabman occupied the middle distance
imperturbably, and did not come down from their hills
to clout me with knowledge. From this fact I
experienced a criminal elation. I lost view of
the idea that if I had been brow-beaten by porters
and cabmen from one end of the United States to the
other end I should warmly like it, because in numbers
they are superior to me, and collectively they can
have a great deal of fun out of a matter that would
merely afford me the glee of the latent butcher.
This London, composed of a porter and a cabman, stood
to me subtly as a benefactor. I had scanned the
drama, and found that I did not believe that the mood
of the men emanated unduly from the feature that there
was probably more shillings to the square inch of
me than there were shillings to the square inch of
them. Nor yet was it any manner of palpable warm-heartedness
or other natural virtue. But it was a perfect
artificial virtue; it was drill, plain, simple drill.
And now was I glad of their drilling, and vividly
approved of it, because I saw that it was good for
me. Whether it was good or bad for the porter
and the cabman I could not know; but that point, mark
you, came within the pale of my respectable rumination.
I am sure that it would have been more correct for
me to have alighted upon St. Paul’s and described
no emotion until I was overcome by the Thames Embankment
and the Houses of Parliament. But as a matter
of fact I did not see them for some days, and at this
time they did not concern me at all. I was born
in London at a railroad station, and my new vision
encompassed a porter and a cabman. They deeply
absorbed me in new phenomena, and I did not then care
to see the Thames Embankment nor the Houses of Parliament.
I considered the porter and the cabman to be more
important.
CHAPTER II
Copyrights
Men, Women, and Boats from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
