TRAVELLING COMPANIONS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2006, 5 April 1878, Page 5 (Supplement)

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS.

Nothing tries the human nature of people more than the absence of conventional forms. Then the real temper cornea ont, and what men are made of ia proved more by how they bear themselves when freed firom the pressure

of social obligation than by how they bear themselves unoer the strain of trial, or beneath the burning-glass of prosperity. People who meet together at pensions, m hotels, m railway carriages, on board ship, where there is no central authority to keep everything smooth, and where a little fighting has to be done, each for his own hand, if he would not be trampled on and set aside, show themselves m forms which those who know them only m draw-ing-rooms would never suspect, and exhibit certain roughnesses whicb the artificial smoothness of conventional propriety never allows to appear. People who, at the house of a common friend, would give you the best seat by the fire, the very hinges of the card table, and the daintiest slice of the breast at dinner, meeting you as a stranger m a railway carriage, resent your entrance as an intrusion if they have made up their minds to travel alone, and, with four seats out of the six cumbered with their own parcels, growl impatiently at your modest wraps and bag, for which they have to displace their hatbox and portmanteau. The train is crowded, and they have paid for only one seat ; but they think it uncommonly hard that they may not have the use of all six if they have a fancy that way ; and to have to share the extra space, if they have appropriated it first, is an infliction which they feel themselves justified m resenting, and showuig what they feel. Sullen and stony, certain of your fellow-travellers resist all attempts at intercourse. They have run to earth and refuse to be drawn. To your introductory remarks about the weather perhaps they vouchsafe no reply at all, or maybe only such as is comprised m a rapid glance out of the window and an unintelligible grunt by way of assent. To your feelers on the position of the French Government, or on the details of the ] last battle fought and won m the East, they oppose a snub so decided that you \ are forced to retire into yourself ; and so you pass the 10 or 12 hours of your joint , journey m a state of surly silence, which [ doubles the length, the fatigue, and the [ ennui of the time. Or it may be that you fall m with a gushing or loquacious creature who perhaps enters into minute 1 details oi his or her own history, including her ailments and the ages of her ' children ; or who sets himself to worm , all out of you that he can, as if he were a detective on the look- ? out for dangprous passengers, or a paid spy bound to gather information J and afraid of hostile emissaries. These people are very difficult to deal with if they are cautious m manner, and taking '. m person. They make the first advances A so insidiously, that, unless, you are very [ wide awake indeed, you have given them ' a clue, and so far committed yourself before you suspect their intention. If, [ however, you are an old stager and ac- • customed to travel, tlieir very charm, '■ which beguiles the unwary, puts you on your guard ; and if you do not suspect \ the pickpocket, you are afraid of the pos- ! sible intruder and dangerous acquaint- ' ance of the future, m the smiling, welldressed, well-bred man, whose first ap- [ proaches are so courteous, yet so persistently followed up, and who somehow seems as if he were trying to catch you m ( a moral net, from which you knew by ext perience escape is difficult. For the : young and handsome of either sex, these ( fellow-travellers are among the most for- ; midable that they can encounter. What different styles and types of people one meets m travelling ! Who does not know the jolly, eating and drinking, laughing, loud-voiced people, who have a neat little basketful of the most . delightful comestibles, which they visit about once an hour, and enjoy with such • intense gusto ! They are the good- , hearted, kindly-natured animals of j society ; free livers, and with an objeci, tion to starch ; ready to do others a good turn when they have satisfied themselves i and have leisure — but demanding first of ali things, that they shall be satisfied, and that their philanthropy shall not m.- . elude sacrifice. And there are the dry i and uncomfortoble people with their small . packet of stale sandwiches and a few hard biscuits for a relish ; who take life as a , penance and pleasure as a sin ;to whom laughter is the sign of mental vacancy, if i not of want of grace ; and who make theni- [ selves and everyone else uncomfortable m . proportion as they are conscientious ' and striving. There are the cranky and disagreeable folk who will have the windows shut no matter how warm it is, and the robust and selfish who will have , them all open no matter how cold it may i be ; there are the mothers with spoilt children who turn the carriage into a nursery, if it is not a bear garden, and the mothers with children so subdued that your heart aches to see their unnatural patience and suppression ; there are the industrious who knit, the studious who read, the idle who sleep, the restless who wander to and fro, and who at every station thrust half their body out of the window, and chaff the guards or the porters as they pass. There are those who buy all that is to be bought, and smother themselves m papers which they neither read nor share ; and others who have not brought so much as a penny paper wherewith to beguile the lengthening time. Some hold forth — now on science ; here is a popular lecturer, arranging the heads, or repeating them, of the discourse which he is engaged to deliver at such and such a toivn hall tonight — and now on religion : a street preacher who asks you jauntily after your boul, and what have been your experiences, and whether you feel "safe" or not. But he is sure to produce a storm of disapprobation from the peppery bne of the company, who fiercely hurls back the tracts which he distributes, and which others accept meekly and reverently enough. The preacher, however, ia found more frequently m the second class among the clerks and servants than m the first, or m the third among the rough-hewn navvies and gnarled old farmer bodies, with the choir of the little chapel practising its hymns as it comes back from its summer day's outing to Chatsworth or Buzton. There are the personages who carry their atmosphere of distinction with them, and make you feel that you are m a superior presence ; and the little people who gape at the title on the luggage labels and think themselves fortunate to be m the same train as the duke or the prince. There are the practical and punctual who come just at the right moment and get through all the necessary businesß without a hitch; and the unpractical and unpunctual whose whole action is a muddle, a fuss and a fight, and who only tumble into the train at the last moment ; — and then are m doubt as to their luggage and belongings. There are the ultra-feminine women who look like fainting all the way, and seem to live only by their smelling bottles and eau de Cologne ; and the women who talk loudly on the question of their rights and wrongs, who cross : their legs and set their felt hats on one side, and swagger like the bad copies of i men whioh they tty to make themselves . appear. There are those who, leaving tdl ;

they love, sit with dry, stained, mournful eyes, gazing blankly from the window, and seeing nothing of all they pass ; and those who, going to all they love, cannot refrain from causelesß smiles and bursts of happy laughter, and snatches of irrepressible song, so good iB life, so bright and dear the day ! And there are others again, who are simply careless and amused by the moment and what it brings ; while their neighbor, out on a holiday, spoils all by ill temper ; and their vis-a-vis. out on business, thinks only of the point to which he is bound, and cares nothing for the events of the transit one way or another. In the next compartment travel that gay troupe, passing from town to town, fulfilling their country engagements. You hear their laughter, and the song which the tenor is sure to begin, with the bass and baritone to follow, when the soprano and the contralto have put m their distinguishing notes. How you envy them — easy, gay, frank, and free as they seem to be among themselves ! But only frank and free among themselves. To thePhilistine " public " they areas closely shut as oysters, and if you travel m the same carriage even, will give you not so much as a glimpse of their pearl 3. In return, there are the people of very minor achievements and very small reputations who discourse learnedly, tell who they are with an air, and offer themselves to the admiring contemplation of their fellow - travellers like something precious and not often met with. They oppress certain meek souls who bend easily under the weight of others' personality, and we have seee more than one temporary victimisation made by rampant egotism on the one side, and suffered by craven humility on the other, during a railway journey lasting through a few hours. There are the lovers of pets who carry a travelling menagerie with them, and these are sure to be bracketed with those to whom dogs are — ouly dogs ; and who have not given m to the modern phase of animal worship. There are starch prudes and gay coquettes ; people who go into ecstacies at everything they see, and people to whom all is barren and forlorn ; there are bread and butter school girls who look shy, sly, frightened by their loneliness or emboldened by their liberty, and schoolboys who, for the same cause, bear themselves as miniature men or as unlicked cubs ; but among them we fall sometimes on a sweet young girl, modest, pure, and simple, afraid of no evil be- > cause knowing of none, and on a fine manly-spirited young fellow, m whom we see the future Englishman of the best type, as m her the ideal woman — the men and women who made England what she isj and what, please God, she will continue to be while the race and name shall endure.