Two of the many passengers by a certain late Sunday evening train,Mr.Thomas Idle and Mr.Francis Goodchild,yielded up their tickets at a little rotten platform (converted into artificial touchwood by smoke and ashes),deep in the manufacturing bosom of Yorkshire.Amysterious bosom it appeared,upon a damp,dark,Sunday night,dashed through in the train to the music of the whirling wheels,the panting of the engine,and the part-singing of hundreds of third-class excursionists,whose vocal efforts 'bobbed arayound'
from sacred to profane,from hymns,to our transatlantic sisters the Yankee Gal and Mairy Anne,in a remarkable way.There seemed to have been some large vocal gathering near to every lonely station on the line.No town was visible,no village was visible,no light was visible;but,a multitude got out singing,and a multitude got in singing,and the second multitude took up the hymns,and adopted our transatlantic sisters,and sang of their own egregious wickedness,and of their bobbing arayound,and of how the ship it was ready and the wind it was fair,and they were bayound for the sea,Mairy Anne,until they in their turn became a getting-out multitude,and were replaced by another getting-in multitude,who did the same.And at every station,the getting-in multitude,with an artistic reference to the completeness of their chorus,incessantly cried,as with one voice while scuffling into the carriages,'We mun aa'gang toogither!'
The singing and the multitudes had trailed off as the lonely places were left and the great towns were neared,and the way had lain as silently as a train's way ever can,over the vague black streets of the great gulfs of towns,and among their branchless woods of vague black chimneys.These towns looked,in the cinderous wet,as though they had one and all been on fire and were just put out -a dreary and quenched panorama,many miles long.
Thus,Thomas and Francis got to Leeds;of which enterprising and important commercial centre it may be observed with delicacy,that you must either like it very much or not at all.Next day,the first of the Race-Week,they took train to Doncaster.
And instantly the character,both of travellers and of luggage,entirely changed,and no other business than race-business any longer existed on the face of the earth.The talk was all of horses and 'John Scott.'Guards whispered behind their hands to station-masters,of horses and John Scott.Men in cut-away coats and speckled cravats fastened with peculiar pins,and with the large bones of their legs developed under tight trousers,so that they should look as much as possible like horses'legs,paced up and down by twos at junction-stations,speaking low and moodily of horses and John Scott.The young clergyman in the black strait-waistcoat,who occupied the middle seat of the carriage,expounded in his peculiar pulpit-accent to the young and lovely Reverend Mrs.
Crinoline,who occupied the opposite middle-seat,a few passages of rumour relative to 'Oartheth,my love,and Mithter John Eth-COTT.'
A bandy vagabond,with a head like a Dutch cheese,in a fustian stable-suit,attending on a horse-box and going about the platforms with a halter hanging round his neck like a Calais burgher of the ancient period much degenerated,was courted by the best society,by reason of what he had to hint,when not engaged in eating straw,concerning 't'harses and Joon Scott.'The engine-driver himself,as he applied one eye to his large stationary double-eye-glass on the engine,seemed to keep the other open,sideways,upon horses and John Scott.
Breaks and barriers at Doncaster Station to keep the crowd off;temporary wooden avenues of ingress and egress,to help the crowd on.Forty extra porters sent down for this present blessed Race-Week,and all of them making up their betting-books in the lamp-room or somewhere else,and none of them to come and touch the luggage.Travellers disgorged into an open space,a howling wilderness of idle men.All work but race-work at a stand-still;all men at a stand-still.'Ey my word!Deant ask noon o'us to help wi't'luggage.Bock your opinion loike a mon.Coom!Dang it,coom,t'harses and Joon Scott!'In the midst of the idle men,all the fly horses and omnibus horses of Doncaster and parts adjacent,rampant,rearing,backing,plunging,shying -apparently the result of their hearing of nothing but their own order and John Scott.
Grand Dramatic Company from London for the Race-Week.Poses Plastiques in the Grand Assembly Room up the Stable-Yard at seven and nine each evening,for the Race-Week.Grand Alliance Circus in the field beyond the bridge,for the Race-Week.Grand Exhibition of Aztec Lilliputians,important to all who want to be horrified cheap,for the Race-Week.Lodgings,grand and not grand,but all at grand prices,ranging from ten pounds to twenty,for the Grand Race-Week!
Rendered giddy enough by these things,Messieurs Idle and Goodchild repaired to the quarters they had secured beforehand,and Mr.
Goodchild looked down from the window into the surging street.
'By Heaven,Tom!'cried he,after contemplating it,'I am in the Lunatic Asylum again,and these are all mad people under the charge of a body of designing keepers!'
All through the Race-Week,Mr.Goodchild never divested himself of this idea.Every day he looked out of window,with something of the dread of Lemuel Gulliver looking down at men after he returned home from the horse-country;and every day he saw the Lunatics,horse-mad,betting-mad,drunken-mad,vice-mad,and the designing Keepers always after them.The idea pervaded,like the second colour in shot-silk,the whole of Mr.Goodchild's impressions.