Ebook The South-Eastern Railway Manual

Nowhere is the tide in the affairs of men more remarkably illustrated than here and nowhere does it ebb and ?ow with greater regularity. No sooner has the receding tide left the strand, than a solitary pedestrian, whose huge frame and gaitered calves proclaim a Sussex farmer or a Kentisll yeoman, is seen, like the first ripple of advancing wave, rounding the corner, and anxiously glancing at the clock, compares the time with that of his village chronometer, which he afi'ectionatel y, or perhaps technically, calls his my. The difference of seventeen minutes between the two, while enabling him to wipe his brow, and more leisurely to gain the station, wrests from his relieved mind sundry ejaculations of Cockney boobies, queer notions to set their clock by high water at London bridge. But faster and faster gathers the crowd, hundreds of pedestrians, and from every description of vehicle descending parties jostling together, eagerly press forward to secure their tickets, and to select their respective carriages. While without the station walls all was a mixture of chaos and Babylon — the natural consequence of universal individual independence; within, all is symmetry and regularity. To each is his allotted place, to each his allotted time.