There is one more type of traveller that must be mentioned here, if only for the guidance of the young and simple. He is usually an elderly man, neatly dressed, but a little tobacco-stained, always seated in a corner, and he opens the conversation by pulling out a gold hunter and remarking that the train is at least three minutes behind time. Then, with the slightest encouragement, he will begin to talk, and his talk will be all of trains. As some men discuss their acquaintances, or others speak of violins or roses, so he talks of trains, their history, their quality, their destiny. All his days and nights seem to have been passed in railway carriages, all his reading seems to have been in time-tables. He will tell you of the 12.35 from this place and the 3.49 from the other place, and how the 10.18 ran from So-and-so to So-and-so in such a time, and how the 8.26 was taken off and the 5.10 was put on; and the greatness of his subject moves him to eloquence, and there is passion and mastery in his voice, now wailing over a missed connection or a departed hero of trains, now exultantly proclaiming the glories of a non-stop express or a wonderful run to time. However dead you were to the passion, the splendour, the pathos, in this matter of trains, before he has done with you you will be ready to weep over the 7.37 and cry out in ecstasy at the sight of the 2.52.
Beware of the elderly man who sits in the corner of the carriage and says that the train is two minutes behind time, for he is the Ancient Mariner of railway travellers, and will hold you with his glittering eye.
My friend Glindersby is a changed man, and, for my part, I think it a change for the better. For the one thing that had always spoiled Glindersby for the company of sane men was his ever-recurring praise of the present age and its mechanical ingenuities. Though brought up to a noble old profession, he was one of those who are for ever crying up the marvels that we have of late brought into the world; he would subscribe to such things as _Wonders of Modern Science_ or _Engineering Marvels of the World_, and could be found gloating over vilely-coloured prints of airships and electric lifts. Because there was a railway at Kamchatka or a telephone at Tangiers, he could not understand why all men should not be happy. In short, he was one of those latter-day fanatics who, in a kind of ecstasy, are always crying out to each other, ‘Look at Radium ...!’ and ‘What will they do next!’ and other phrases from their dark liturgy. This was Glindersby’s one failing, and it had, I knew, kept him from much good company. Now, I say, he is changed, for he seems to have lost his old damaging enthusiasm, and in the late hours of fireside confessional he has now begun telling a certain trumpery tale, a piece of hocus-pocus if there ever was one, to account for the change.