Half an Hour in a Railway Station.



It was one of those bleak and rainy days which mark the coming of spring
on New England sea-shores. The rain felt and looked as if it might at any
minute become hail or snow; the air pricked like needles when it blew
against flesh. Yet the huge railway station was as full of people as ever.
One could see no difference between this dreariest of days and the
sunniest, so far as the crowd was concerned, except that fewer of the
people wore fine clothes; perhaps, also, that their faces looked a little
more sombre and weary than usual.

There is no place in the world where human nature shows to such sad
disadvantage as in waiting-rooms at railway stations, especially in the
"Ladies' Room." In the "Gentlemen's Room" there is less of that ghastly,
apathetic silence which seems only explainable as an interval between two
terrible catastrophes. Shall we go so far as to confess that even the
unsightly spittoons, and the uncleanly and loquacious fellowship resulting
from their common use, seem here, for the moment, redeemed from a little
of their abominableness,--simply because almost any action is better than
utter inaction, and any thing which makes the joyless, taciturn American
speak to his fellow whom he does not know, is for the time being a
blessing. But in the "Ladies' Room" there is not even a community of
interest in a single bad habit, to break the monotone of weary stillness.
Who has not felt the very soul writhe within her as she has first crossed
the threshold of one of these dismal antechambers of journey? Carpetless,
dingy, dusty; two or three low sarcophagi of greenish-gray iron in open