ESCALATORS

Otago Witness, Issue 3742, 1 December 1925, Page 10

ESCALATORS

Hugh Gisborne.

By

(Fon the Witness.) On the whole, I hail their arrival. They are more seemly and dignified than the lifts into which otherwise I must hurl myself, feeling my individuality squeezed out by a mass of humanity which stands on my toes, props itself against me and incorporates me with itself. There is no tedious waiting for an escalator to fill up; po peremptory official order to stand bacK; no pitiless slamming of the door of hope In one’s face. It goes on its steady, quiet course —a stream on whose current human beings drift towards their desired haven without exertion, delay, or loss of dignity —nor does it demand uniformity or hold back the eager. If you choose to use your pwn steam, the beneficent current will iielp you to beat records. •But . . . yet . . . however . . . notwithstanding ... it must be admitted that an escalator is not everybody’s choice. Even its most staunch advocates may on occasion (under an unmoved exterior) rage furiously at its whimsicalities. Here is an irritating memory picture a week old. I find a charming woman hovering above the brink like a timid bather in November’s Serpentine. “Would you mind? It is very foolish. 3 . . I am so nervous. . . “Ce n’est que le premier nas qui coute,” I say, encouragingly, and lead her with me. “I don’t like the first.” “But the last’s much the worst,” she murmurs, brokenly. I am struck by this unexpected confirmation of my theory that poetry is the foundation of human nature. / When earthquakes of emotion overthrow conventionality and lay bare the bedrock of personality, the naked soul clutches at rhyme and rhythm—though these may be inadequate to the point of indecency—as, alas! bo often in grand opera. I muse silently, but the escalator is bearing us down a steeper slope, and my companion moves closer and clings. That filly ass Jones shoots past. I don’t know why his expression should annoy me. His fatuous grin should excite pity rather than anger. I lead my fair friend off the moving way. She instantly regains her poise and thanks me with gracious dignity. I see my train sliding away from the platform—.Jones’s grin hanging in the murky air. I resolved to steel my heart, but today an older, stouter, homelier, equally distressed lady appealed to my chivalry, find I guided her to the ton step. Placing her hand on the rail, I fled. But her dismayed cry, “Oh, don’t leave me,” made me promise to wait for her at the foot. Again I lost mv train. * A smiling porter, having helped a shortlighted. elderly man off. came towards m**. dropping pence into his pocket. “Thev’re a fair treat, some of them, sir. One day a lady made a spring on to the bottom step of an up-grade. She was talking ouite wild: ‘One of these horrid tilings—l’ll never get on—oh, oh, I’ll tumble when I get off.’ She hopped up Rka a mad hare, and jumned high enough . to clear a fence instead of stepping off quiet-like at the ton. My mother won’t travel bv tube at all now for fear there’ll he a moving staircase. So when she goes to Hampstead she o-ets in a ’bus and ■pends the dav. And some won’t step out on the near foot, because they have been told somewhere, some time, ‘Bight foot first.’ or vice versa. I’m rescuing tljem all dav long. But. anvhow, the women don’t try to fly in the face of the escalator. To see a man make six starts up a down-stair is better than Charlie Chaplin. Here’s '"Uir train, sir.” My wife contributes a special and individual grievance against escalators. “Jane’s gojng. The railway porter that ■he’s purged to seems to be earning much more late'v. Jane says it's because escalators have been put in. But how can’that Inake anv difference?” How, indeed!