Lorry

“ In the neighbourhood is a lorry decorated with clean shirts, and occupied by young washerwomen fired by an enthusiasm which manifests itself in bursts of shrill cheering and lively interchange of chaff with the spectators. ”

“ Lorry, getting down into the road—assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and pulled up the window. “He may come close; there's nothing wrong.” ”

“ Lorry, the passenger, shaking himself out of it in chains of straw, a tangle of shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather like a larger sort of dog. ”

“ Every railway station is crowded; every booking-office thronged; every seat—nay, all standing room—is occupied in every kind of public conveyance; the roads leading out of London for miles are crowded with every description of vehicle—van, cart, chaise, gig—drawn by every size and sort of donkey, pony, or horse; if it be a dusty day, a great dull unbroken choking cloud of dust hangs over every line of road. ”

“ You have none of you ever heard of a second-class railway carriage—didn’t know that such things were made. You want a first-class Pullman car reserved for each two of you. Some of you have seen an omnibus in the distance, and have wondered what it was used for. To suggest that you should travel in such a plebeian conveyance, is to give you a shock that takes you two days to recover from. You expect a private carriage, with a footman in livery, to take you through the mountains. You, all of you, must have the most expensive places in the theatre. ”

“ People exchange good-byes and shake hands about the carriage which is taking off the bathers; the hotel people press forward, their eyes brilliant with that shiny look, that famous sheen of the Savoyard; we kiss people whom we hardly know; handkerchiefs are waved; the horse-bells jangle, and then the heavy and crowded wagon disappears, swaying along the narrow road on the side of the hill, carrying off with it those names and faces which for a moment have made a part of our life in common, those faces unknown yesterday and to-morrow forgot. ”

“ The grime and smoke that envelop everything about the train, the crash and shriek of the wheels, the trembling and groaning of the frail carriages hurled onward at a terrific speed, to say nothing of the never-to-be-forgotten service—does it deserve such a term—of the dining-car, will all seem like a nightmare when one glides along beneath the silvery English skies, through the untainted country air, and pauses for an excellent, cleanly served luncheon at some well-ordered wayside inn. ”

“ But the chief attraction in the afternoon is the drive along its great carriage roads, to view the numerous equipages of every nationality and description that frequent them. It is really an interesting study to view the solid old establishments of English residents, with driver and footmen, the young English bloods driving those heavily-timbered vehicles of theirs, which they seem to have invented for the purpose of taking their valets out to ride, and showing the neatness of their livery, the length of their whips, and the points of the horse attached to the clumsy gundalow. ”

“ He's got to get me a chauffeur who can speak French and knows the Continent, and Aunt Mary and I will do the rest of our London shopping on an automobile—my own, if you please. Then, when we are ready to cross the Channel, we'll drive to Newhaven, ship the car to Dieppe, and after that I hope we shan't so much as see a railroad train, except from a long distance. Automobiles for ever, say I, mine in particular. ”

“ As the train came to a solemn pause in a deep cutting a number of us gathered together in the warm and cosy Pullman, the ne plus ultra of railway cars, far surpassing in comfort and luxury an English or Continental first-class carriage, though not adorned as are the Italian cars with those abominations of the sterner sex—tidies for the head to rest against. ”

“ A railway-carriage even of the most antique description, when its glass is opaque with rime, is a little less like a prison-cell than a four-wheeled cab. For which reason, perhaps, as the vehicle ground on beneath the misty leafless elms, the frigid air was allowed to beat softly in from the open window upon its occupant's slightly impurpled face. ”

“ After an hour’s slow progress, sitting in a railway carriage, with the din of children in the ears, and, in the nostrils, the smell of truffles and fish and such things as cannot be procured in the country, one descends at last on the platform of a little station, and lifts out the joyful half-dozen of one’s progeny!
How green the trees are, how fresh the breeze, even along the dusty highway, that would lead across the mountains of the Giove, were one not minded to turn aside and follow the torrent’s course to left! ”

“ What a return to Paris! The highway crowded with men and beasts, the sheep running loose between the wheels, the green of the market-gardeners’ carts mingling with the piled-up furniture in the vans. On the railway embankment, which lay on one side of our road, trucks upon trucks extending in interminable rows, halting and whistling calls, which were answered and re-echoed on the distant line. ”

“ The carriages are so small—two-storied though they are—that one feels as if one were taking a drive in a donkey-cart or station fly, and more than once we were almost impelled to call out to our driver to stop and let us gather wild-flowers by the wayside. ”

“ Instead, however, of the kings and princes and the great ones of the earth who used to be driven up in fine style in their ‘chariots’ a hundred years ago, and in place of the weary coach-travellers who used to alight at the hospitable doors of the ‘King’s Arms,’ the commercial travellers of to-day are deposited here by the hotel omnibus from the railway station with little or no remains of that pomp and circumstance which accompanied arrivals in the olden time. ”

“ You see the lorries are almost always full of rations ready for delivery; so I slept in the driver's seat, and found it quite tolerable. It is just like the driver's seat on a motor-bus; in fact, many of the lorries are old London General omnibuses converted. Personally, I never wish for anything better, least of all on active service. There (p. 193) was a cushion and I had my blanket bag. What more could a man want?
The Ulster Division did remarkably well in the recent fighting. ”

“ The carriage-road is equally alive, with people riding and driving along; farmers and country gentlemen, country clergymen, parish overseers, and various other personages, drawn to the market-town by some real or imagined business, are rattling forward on horseback, or in carriages of various kinds, gigs, and spring-carts, and carts without springs. ”

“ It is a lonelier road now than ever it had been in all the centuries between the Middle Ages and the dawn of the railway era. Railways at one blow took not only the passenger traffic, but the carriage of goods and minerals; and the cattle and sheep once driven in hundreds of thousands along the highways and byways began to be despatched in cattle-trucks. ”

“ Scores of cabs and carriages went by, eastward and westward, but no carts or wains or lorries, such as one sees in London or Glasgow—vehicles with bright lamps and well muffled occupants, gentlemen in evening suits, and ladies in ball or dinner dresses, and crowds of pedestrians, under the brilliant gas lights and long boulevard-like lines of trees—the ever-changing human panorama of a great city street before midnight. ”

“ How pleasant it can be, alone in a first-class railway carriage, on the first day of a holiday that is to be fairly long, to dawdle through a bit of English country that is unfamiliar, stopping at every station. You have a map open on your knee, and you pick out the villages that lie to right and left by their church towers. ”

“ The clerks and warehousemen were hurrying by to their desks and counters; work-folk were leisurely getting home for their well-earned breakfast; smart young men and slim-waisted women were already setting the shop windows to rights; great lorries were clattering their loads of long iron bars through the crowded streets; and omnibuses and tramway-cars and railway-trains were bringing in from all points of the compass their humming freight of eager human bees to this mighty and dusky hive. ”

“ A few words on railway travelling in England: it differs from ours essentially. First, the cars on English roads are not so convenient, comfortable, or even so private as the American car. In the English first-class carriage, four persons must sit facing four persons; consequently four must perforce ride backwards, and the four are placed so as to stare directly at their opposite neighbors,—sometimes unpleasant, if all are not acquainted, especially at lunch time, &c. ”

“ The most common carriage is the volante, but there are some carriages in the English style, with servants in livery on the box. I have taken a fancy for the strange-looking two-horse volante. The postilion, the long, dangling traces, the superfluousness of a horse to be ridden by the man that guides the other, and the prodigality of silver, give the whole a look of style that eclipses, the neat appropriate English equipage. The ladies ride in full dress, décolletées, without hats. The servants on the carriages are not all Negroes. Many of the drivers are white. ”

“ It is a delightful day, shaming yesterday’s mud upon the carriage, if anything could shame a carriage, in a land where carriages are never cleaned. Everybody is brisk; and as we finish breakfast, the horses come jingling into the yard from the Post-house. Everything taken out of the carriage is put back again. The brave Courier announces that all is ready, after walking into every room, and looking all round it, to be certain that nothing is left behind. Everybody gets in. Everybody connected with the Hôtel de l’Ecu d’Or is again enchanted. ”

“ In all directions the deep slopes, where the railway spans some valley, are thickly starred with the pale primrose, and the maidenly cowslips nod to the passengers from the brows of the cutting through the gentle hills. ... The railways do no more than run their fine lines through the rural landscape, making sunny banks for the flowers and shrubs most loved by the English people. ”

“ But what do they know of England who only England know from the window of a railway-carriage?—the great plain or valley, even with its sunlit varieties of grass and corn and wood, contributes only a small part of the beauty which England has to show, but which she declines to disclose to the railway-traveller. ”

“ I had a very good mouth—that is, I could be guided by the slightest touch of the rein, and that is a great thing in London, amongst carriages, omnibusses, carts, vans, trucks, cabs, and great waggons creeping along at a walking pace; some going one way, some another, some going slow, others wanting to pass them, omnibusses stopping short every few minutes to take up a passenger, obliging the horse that is coming behind, to pull up too, or to pass, and get before them ”

“ The railway porters, who attend to the business of transferring the passengers thus from the railway carriages to those of the street, are very numerous all along the platform; and they are very civil and attentive to the passengers, especially to those who come in the first-class cars—and more especially still, according to my observation and experience, if the traveller has an agreeable looking lady under his charge. ”

“ Shut carriages, open carriages, motors of different sizes and makes, dog-carts, pony carriages, governess carts—on they came, one after another, stirring up the dust of the road till the air seemed full of a powdery mist, through which unhappy pedestrians ploughed along in the shadow of the hedgerows, their skirts held high in white-gloved hands. ”

“ Parsee palaces all along the first part of the drive; and past them all the world is driving; the private carriages of wealthy Englishmen and natives of rank are manned by a driver and three footmen in stunning oriental liveries—two of these turbaned statues standing up behind, as fine as monuments. Sometimes even the public carriages have this superabundant crew, slightly modified—one to drive, one to sit by and see it done, and one to stand up behind and yell—yell when there is anybody in the way, and for practice when there isn't. ”

“ Sitting there in the third-class carriage, he became happy again. The presence of his fellow-passengers was not so hampering as in England. In England, everybody seems held tight and gripped, nothing is left free. Every passenger seems like a parcel holding his string as fast as he can about him, lest one corner of the wrapper should come undone and reveal what is inside. And every other passenger is forced, by the public will, to hold himself as tight-bound also. ”

“ Travellers now arrive from all quarters, in cabriolets, in calashes, in the shabby vettura, and in the elegant private carriage drawn by post-horses, and driven by postillions in the tightest possible deer-skin breeches, the smallest red coats, and the hugest jack-boots. The streets about the doors of the hotels resound with the cracking of whips and the stamping of horses, and are encumbered with carriages, heaps of baggage, porters, postillions, couriers, and travellers. Night at length arrives—the time of spectacles and funerals. ”