86 SHOOTING THE GROUSE 



Capel Court, Lincoln's Tnn, or Pall Mall, and to be- 

 come aware that you are tearing over the borders of 

 Hertfordshire at fifty-five miles an hour, on a magnifi- 

 cent starlight night. The great oaks and elms of old 

 England fleet by you like streams of cardboard trees, 

 the long, low landscape fades into the blue-black of 

 the sky, and so steady is the going that the distance 

 seems like a slow dioramic procession of woods and 

 hills, while you alone are motionless, and the nearer 

 objects houses, fences, telegraph poles, parapets, or 

 platforms but so many formless phantoms, rushing 

 with roar, scream, and rattle back to the South. 



Then comes sleep, in which the monotonous vibra- 

 tion of the train reiterates itself persistently, and intrudes 

 upon your dreams ; your clients, patients, colleagues, 

 or opponents whispering vague things to you to the 

 eternal accompaniment of the noise of the wheels, 

 their words and your replies always twisted to fit in 

 with the exact beats of the pulse of the engine or the 

 clicking of the coupling irons. A slackening, a hissing, 

 and a cessation of the throbs give you a moment of 

 conscious sanity at Rugby. This has no concern for 

 you: you gather your rugs, always slipping off on to 

 the floor, more tightly round, and as the porters, like 

 far-off ghosts shouting to each other in a huge cavern, 

 repeat the well-known name, all you can think of is 



