Punch: Punch (97.1889)

240

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [November 16, 1889.

THE MOAN OF THE STATION-MASTER.

Special Instructions ! Yes! oh yes! They come in a ceaseless streamy
They haunt my nights like the floods and frights that filled poor Clarence s dream.

Special!
There ’s
something
sardonic
now in the
very sound
of the word.
I’m sore and
sick. That
accursed
“click”
seems the
only sound
I’ve heard
Since —
when?
Since I
heard it last
in my sleep,
if you call
anightmare
sleep

From dawn till dawn, and from night to night The hours fly fast, or creep,

But it’s all one round, and the fretful sound of the needle seems to mark
The pulse unseen of that dull machine, my life, through day and dark.

Special Instructions, another batch! And my walls scarce hold the space
For another “ Note.” How the papers float sometimes in this dingy place
Before my eyes in the lamp’s dull glow, when the winter nights are drear,

And the rattle of rails, and the drag of wires are the only sounds I hear
Above the wail of the restless wind—like me, it knows not rest,

That wandering sorrow, that vagrant voice of a thing with toil opprest.

It is only a dingy shanty this, with its poster-patched drab walls,

A sordid stage for the tragedy of one of Toil’s tired thralls.

Tragedy ? That’s an imposing word, a touch too high ; and yet,

Is death by dagger a loftier thing than death from fever and fret ?

’Tis more “dramatic,” I grant you that; hut the harpies of classic Fate
Could hardly harry a man much worse than the thought of a train too late,

Or a way-bill wrong, or a signal missed, or a grievance or complaint
Not duly noted, although they’d tax the soul of a patient saint,

These petty grumbles, and trivial taunts, and muddled moans all round.

No wearier pest than the fussy fool who grumbles without good ground !

Long hours ; indeed, it would puzzle me much to say when'my work is done.

(No doubt the Directors would tell you a different story—but that’s their fun !)
But all day long, and every day, I must bear the worry and weight
Of responsibility undefined, and duties ’tis hard to state.

Only if anything should go wrong, from a train to an old maid’s cat,

Or a lamp let out, or a ticket lost, I am certain to hear of that.

Yes, Pvailwaydom is a wondrous thing ! Does the Public know or care,

What lies behind the blessing and boon of comfort and cheap fare,

O’er which they cackle complacently ? Has it any feeling or thought
For my long, long day in this dreary den, tired limbs, and brain o’erwrought ?
The “ System ” stands with its myriad hands, like old Briareus, and serves
The general need, and the huge routine from its course so seldom swerves
Good folk forget that those countless “ hands ” hold lever, light, and pen,

Are the hands, indeed, of no giant machine, hut of living suffering Men!

So the work is hard, and the pay is small, and each unit fills his place
On Engine, or Station, or Signal Box ; who troubles to scan his face
For the lines of care and worry and wear that my wife can see in mine,

A. Station-Master for twenty years on the Hurry-and-Harry-’em Line ?
Time-Tables, Way-Bills, Special Notices,-—those are the things I read,

Not the sort of Railway Literature you recognise, indeed,

Fair lady there with the languid air, and the last Sensation Novel.

No time for Haggard or Besant, Ma’am, in this poster-cumbered hovel!

Flurry and worry, fever and fret, long labour, petty strife,

’Tis these, Ma’am, that make up—and mar—a Station-Master’s Life !

A Weak Point.—Sir,—I am not a Theologian, hut if I am, without knowing
it, I’m as good as any other Theologian. Protestants always triumphantly
attack the Pope’s Infallibility. _ Everyone knows what a hull is. It’s a blunder,
a mistake. Now, Sir, I’m going to bring forward one argument which will
destroy once and for ever the whole doctrine of the Pope’s Infallibility. If their
Holinesses are infallible, they can’t make blunders, can they now ? “ Certainly
not,” says Father Tom. “Well, your Pdvirence,” says I, “consult your
history. Haven’t the Popes all along made any amount of ‘ hulls ’ ? ” And
with that I turned on my heel, whistling, “Boyne Water” and left His
Rivirence bothered entirely. Ne Plus Ulster.

ROBERT ON EPPING EOREST.

Aeter a rayther long xperience, I shood say if there
ever was a hard-working set of Gennelmen as dewoted
theirselves to the performance of their werry harduous
dooties for the good of the Public with an amount of
henergy and detummination never hexelled, it must be
the Epping Forest Committee of the Grand Old Coppera-
shun of the Citty of Lundon.

Take, for hinstance, their larst xpedition there. What
did they care about the Fore-Cast in the Morning Papers
—which is amost as often rite as it is rong—a saying as it
was a going for to rain, why nothink, so off they set by the
10 o’Clock train, quite hurley in the morning, as fur as
Lowton, and then jumping merrily into the carridges a
waiting for ’em off they drove to all the warious pints
of the butiful Forest where deppytations of the Local
Swells was a waiting for ’em, to surgest warious him-
provements as wood make it, if possibel, ewen more
butifuller than it was afore.

With their jolly thick hoots, and their ekally jolly
thick Gaiters, and their grey friz Coats, and their little
round Ats, and their jolly thick sticks, they looked more
like a Band of Robbing Hood’s Men than Forest Wer-
derers—witch I hleeves means sumthink green, tho that
was about the larst culler as anyboddy as knowed ’em
wood apply to sitch a jovial set. And tho the Sun
favoured them with just a gleam or 2 to welcome ’em at
starting, it soon came on to rain Cats and Dogs. What
did they care about the rain who had their work to do,
and hunder the watchful eyes of their fust-class Chair-
man, and their fust-class Souperintender ; so they worked
away, as only Lundoners can work, till 14 the Sun set, and
hup rose the yellow Moon,” as the Pote sez, and then, as
they coodn’t see their ands afore ’em, much less behind
’em, they went away to their warious homes rejoicing
over a hard day’s work thorowly well done.

And now cums the staggerer for the Copperashun
libellers. “ Howoffen,” asks these snearing ninnys, “did
they stop for refreshment ? Probably at ewery place where
improvements was wanted, and at werry great xpense.”
Ah, that’s all as they knows about it. For it did so
appen, as I herd one on ’em say yesterday, that all they
had to support ’em in their long day’s work was a Lunch!
but such a Lunch as praps was never ekwalled for both
habundence, and helegance, and warm-artedness. “Ah,
and at a pretty xpense,” says the grumblers aforesaid.
No, my noble but stingy Swells, nothink of the sort, for
it was all a free gift from one of theirselves, who lives
there ; and, jest to shew the sort of Gennelmen as they
has among ’em, this same horspitable Werderer, and his
ekally horspitable Brother and Werderer, had acshally
bort and paid for out of their hone pockets, no less than
twelve and an arf acres of privet land, which they has
presented to the Grand Old Copperashun for them to
hadd to the five or six thowsand acres of Epping Forest,
as they held afore, for the helth and enjoyment of the
People, with all its butiful Mountings, and all its butiful
Walleys, and its thousands of Trees, and its millions of
Blackberrys, and its Thickets, and its Thinnings, and its
Arnt Sallys, and its Donkeys, and its Coker Nuts, and
everything else as is necessary for their pure Publick
Enjoyment, and hartistick wreckwreation !

Ah, them’s the sort of rich peepel as I admires ! The
more’s the pity as there’s so preshus few on’em will
foller such grand xampels. But never mind, let the rich
and liberal ones keep on pegging away, and the rich and
stingy will be compelled to foller suit if ony for werry
shame. I owerhead, too, what a jolly sell one of the
Werderers, who is a Tea Totaller, pore fellow, played off
on this same hard-working Committee a year or 2 ago.
He inwited ’em all to Lunch, and a werry good Lunch
it were, with, aperiently, lots of Shampane on the Table,
to which, it being a jolly hot day, they in course helped
theirselves plentyfully in Tumblers, and took good drafts
of it, and before they cood stop theirselves found out it
was that fearful mixture called Rarsherry Shampane!
The effect was so awful upon their unfortnit hinsides,
being, in course, not accustomed to such xtrornary pro-
ductions, that they wun and all with wun acord, when
proceeding on their journey, ordered the Coachman to
pull up at the fust Pub, and there they restored their
usual equelibreum with glasses of hot Brandy and Water
all round ! A sollem warning, I takes it, never to play
not no tricks with that most himportant part of our
hanatermy, the hinterier. Robert.

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