and leisurely took out his schoolroom eraser,
rubbed off an inscription, then polished the board with a cloth,
then looked for a piece of chalk and wrote in a fine curly hand some
notation about a train from Cincinnati in which we were not at all
interested. Ah, here we are at last! Train from Philadelphia!
Arriving on track Number--; no, wrong again! He only change _5
minutes late_ to _10 minutes late_. The crowd mutters and fumes. The
telautograph begins to stutter and we gaze at it feverishly. It
stops again and our dominie looks at it calmly. He taps it gently
with his finger. We wonder, is it out of order? Perhaps that train
is already coming in and he doesn't know it, and Amanda may be
wandering lost somewhere in the vast vistas of the station looking
for us. Shall we dash up to the waiting room and have another look?
But Amanda does not know the station, and there are so many places
where benches are put, and she might think one of those was the
waiting room that had been mentioned. And then there is this
Daylight Saving time mix-up. In a sudden panic we cannot figure out
whether Philadelphia time is an hour ahead of New York time or an
hour behind. We told Amanda to take the one o'clock from
Philadelphia. Well, should she arrive here at two o'clock or at
four? It being now 5:10 by our time, what are we to do? The
telautograph clicks. The priestly person slowly and gravely writes
down that the Philadelphia train is arriving on Track 6. There is a
mad rush: everyone dashes to the gate. And here, coming up the
stairs, is a coloured lady whose anxiously speculating eye must be
the one we seek. In the mutuality of our worry we recognize each
other at once. We seize her in triumph; in fact, we could have
embraced her. All our anguish is past. Amanda is ours!

[Illustration]

THOUGHTS IN THE SUBWAY

I

We hear people complain about the subway: its brutal competitive
struggle, its roaring fury and madness. We think they have not
sufficiently considered it.

Any experience shared daily and for a long time by a great many
people comes to have a communal and social importance; it is
desirable to fill it with meaning and see whether there may not be
some beauty in it. The task of civilization is not to be always
looking wistfully back at a Good Time long ago, or always panting
for a doubtful millennium to come; but to see the significance and
secret of that which is around us. And so we say, in full
s