The Travellers in State

The other day, to my great astonishment, I caught a train; it was
a train going into the Eastern Counties, and I only just caught it.
And while I was running along the train (amid general admiration)
I noticed that there were a quite peculiar and unusual number of
carriages marked "Engaged." On five, six, seven, eight, nine carriages
was pasted the little notice: at five, six, seven, eight, nine windows
were big bland men staring out in the conscious pride of possession.
Their bodies seemed more than usually impenetrable, their faces more
than usual placid. It could not be the Derby, if only for the minor
reasons that it was the opposite direction and the wrong day.
It could hardly be the King. It could hardly be the French President.
For, though these distinguished persons naturally like to be private
for three hours, they are at least public for three minutes.
A crowd can gather to see them step into the train; and there was no
crowd here, or any police ceremonial.

Who were those awful persons, who occupied more of the train
than a bricklayer's beanfeast, and yet were more fastidious
and delicate than the King's own suite? Who were these that
were larger than a mob, yet more mysterious than a monarch?
Was it possible that instead of our Royal House visiting the Tsar,
he was really visiting us? Or does the House of Lords
have a breakfast? I waited and wondered until the train
slowed down at some station in the direction of Cambridge.
Then the large, impenetrable men got out, and after them
got out the distinguished holders of the engaged seats.
They were all dressed decorously in one colour; they had neatly
cropped hair; and they were chained together.

I looked across the carriage at its only other occupant, and our
eyes met. He was a small, tired-looking man, and, as I afterwards learnt,
a native of Cambridge; by the look of him, some working tradesman there,
such as a journeyman tailor or a small clock-mender. In order to make
conversation I said I wondered where the convicts were going.
His mouth twitched with the instinctive irony of our poor, and he said:
"I don't s'pose they're goin' on an 'oliday at the seaside with little
spades and pails." I was naturally delighted, and, pursuing the same vein
of literary invention, I suggested that perhaps dons were taken down
to Cambridge chained together like this. And as he lived in Cambridge,
and had seen several dons, he was pleased with such a scheme. Then when
we had ceased to laugh, we suddenly became quite silent; and the bleak,
grey eyes of the little man grew sadder and emptier than an open sea.
I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking the same, because all
modern sophists are only sophists, and there is such