ency to preserve some obvious record of his
pleasures--the points he has scored in the game. To Nimrod, his tusks;
to Lothario, his photographs; to me (who cut no dash in either of those
veneries, and am not greedy enough to preserve menus nor silly enough
to preserve press-cuttings, but do delight in travelling from place to
place), my railway-labels. Had nomady been my business, had I been a
commercial traveller or a King's Messenger, such labels would have held
for me no charming significance. But I am only by instinct a nomad. I
have a tether, known as the four-mile radius. To slip it is for me
always an event, an excitement. To come to a new place, to awaken in a
strange bed, to be among strangers! To have dispelled, as by sudden
magic, the old environment! It is on the scoring of such points as
these that I preen myself, and my memory is always ringing the
'changes' I have had, complacently, as a man jingles silver in his
pocket. The noise of a great terminus is no jar to me. It is music. I
prick up my ears to it, and paw the platform. Dear to me as the
bugle-note to any war-horse, as the first twittering of the birds in
the hedgerows to the light-sleeping vagabond, that cry of 'Take your
seats please!' or--better still--'En voiture!' or 'Partenza!' Had I the
knack of rhyme, I would write a sonnet-sequence of the journey to
Newhaven or Dover--a sonnet for every station one does not stop at. I
await that poet who shall worthily celebrate the iron road. There is
one who describes, with accuracy and gusto, the insides of engines; but
he will not do at all. I look for another, who shall show us the heart
of the passenger, the exhilaration of travelling by day, the
exhilaration and romance and self-importance of travelling by night.

'Paris!' How it thrills me when, on a night in spring, in the hustle
and glare of Victoria, that label is slapped upon my hat-box! Here,
standing in the very heart of London, I am by one sweep of a
paste-brush transported instantly into that white-grey city across the
sea. To all intents and purposes I am in Paris already. Strange, that
the porter does not say, 'V'la', M'sieu'!' Strange, that the evening
papers I buy at the bookstall are printed in the English language.
Strange, that London still holds my body, when a corduroyed magician
has whisked my soul verily into Paris. The engine is hissing as I hurry
my body along the platform, eager to reunite it with my soul... Over
the windy qua