Surely, nothing is more mysteriously delightful than this
joint consciousness of sleep and movement. Pitiable they to whom it is
denied. All through the night the vibration of the train keeps one-
third of me awake, while the other two parts of me profoundly slumber.
Whenever the train stops, and the vibration ceases, then the one-third
of me falls asleep, and the other two parts stir. I am awake just
enough to hear the hollow-echoing cry of `Crewe' or `York,' and to
blink up at the green-hooded lamp in the ceiling. May be, I raise a
corner of the blind, and see through the steam-dim window the
mysterious, empty station. A solitary porter shuffles along the
platform. Yonder, those are the lights of the refreshment room, where,
all night long, a barmaid is keeping her lonely vigil over the beer-
handles and the Bath-buns in glass cases. I see long rows of
glimmering milk-cans, and wonder drowsily whether they contain forty
modern thieves. The engine snorts angrily in the benighted silence.
Far away is the faint, familiar sound--clink-clank, clink-clank--of
the man who tests the couplings. Nearer and nearer the sound comes. It
passes, recedes It is rather melancholy.... A whistle, a jerk, and the
two waking parts of me are asleep again, while the third wakes up to
mount guard over them, and keeps me deliciously aware of the rhythmic
dream they are dreaming about the hot bath and the clean linen, and
the lovely breakfast that I am to have at Aberdeen; and of the Scotch
air, crisp and keen, that is to escort me, later along the Deeside.
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