Democracy on Bogeys.

Since man took to wearing a calculating machine under his hat and proclaimed himself the king of beasts, he has found it increasingly difficult to live up to his lofty estimation of himself. In fact, without the extra cuticle of importance which he has assumed for public occasions, he is still quite an ordinary human animal without personality, pep, polish, push, savoir faire, sang froid, esprit de corps, or any of the other nine hundred and ninety-nine psychological appendages which serve the needs of frenzied civilisation.

It has been asserted somewhere by someone that Death is the king of social levellers. I venture to suggest, however, that the railway carriage (second class preferred), for reducing the human ego to a common denomination, can give the old reaper a furlong and beat him by a bogey; for however elevated or depressed might be our social status in the great world outside the railway station, the moment we buy that piece of coloured cardboard with the curious little marks on it, at the ticket grill, we join the great fraternity of train-travellers; we are divested of social rank, we shed the robe of pomp and circumstance, and become a unit in the pure democracy of the railway carriage. Our slogan is “seats for all and all for seats,” and our badge of membership is the three-cornered ham sandwich of the railway refreshment room. Our common bond is the knowledge that (pro tem or perchance) we are sacred charges of the State without responsibilities, obligations, or personalities of our own.

We are as little children. The guard clips our ticket with an air of fatherly indulgence, and assures us patiently, both jointly and severally, that the train Does stop at Murphy's Siding. If he does not sing us a lullaby and warn us against hanging by our feet from the luggage racks or poking our heads down the cuspidors, his reason for the omission probably is that he requires all his concentration to find enough cardboard in which to punch another hole in our ticket.

Thus, in the railway carriage human nature reclines, if not actually in the raw, then considerably underdone. In this condition it intrigues the attention in the same manner as does the inside of a brown-paper parcel, and we see others as, deep down in our secret consciousness, we see ourselves.

We see the haggard man with the plump but liver-coloured wife who sinks weakly into a seat and moans for an aspro, while her marriage-burdened partner engages in a bout of catch-as-catch-can with a tin trunk, a box of eggs, two potted aspidistras, and a brown-paper parcel. We recognise the gentleman with the plum-coloured frontage and the fruity breath who wheezes and clucks like a broody “Rhode-Island-Red” at the grave and scornful baby in the next seat. The youth from the hinterlands of the fern-country sits opposite, chewing the same bulls-eyes that he has chewed since railways came into being. His headgear may have grown a trifle smaller, and his head a thought larger, but he retains his air of god-like isolation. He cares nought for public opinion, and breathes robustly through his adenoids with a noise like the lapping of waves on a shingly beach. The pampered page 13 child with whom every traveller is acquainted, endeavours with a persistence worthy of the cause, to achieve self-destruction through every open window, and the tightly-buttoned lady (with the cold disapproving eye of a frozen fish) contemplates the youthful excrescence with the baleful longing of a leashed boa-constrictor viewing a plump calf. We renew acquaintanceship with the ubiquitous Maori boy, who is cursed with everlasting toothache, his large round eyes which peer over a wondrous woollen scarf, coloured like an intoxicated rainbow, regard us with a hint of sad reproof.

Mother and clad are there—work-worn and quiet—feeling like Ishmaels in this strange atmosphere of ease, where everyone just sits and stares at everyone else. They exchange glances now and then—that is all. In their eyes is the dim look of people who live within themselves. They are getting on in years. Dad's joints are getting stiff and mother has an air of worn competence. They are going back to the farm and seem mildly glad of it. The newly-espoused pair from Rata Peak are still asleep with their heads on each other's shoulder, the fruity gentleman is still giving his celebrated impersonation of a clucky hen, the sophisticated baby continues to wither him with a chilly eye, the guard is again making little reassuring noises at his charges, and the haggard man has escaped to the platform for a lungful of soothing nicotine. All is peace, for we are but simple humanity on bogeys. For the present we are removed from the world, but when we alight we will be again aristocrats and artisans, C.T.'s and O.B.E.'s, bakers and bankers, husbands and husbandmen, saints and sinners—but why worry; we have had a glimpse of A ready.