The Prehistoric Railway Station - Page 2

automatic machines;
I have obtained cigarettes, toffee, scent, and other things
that I dislike by the same machinery; I have weighed myself,
with sublime results; and this sense, not only of the
healthiness of popular things, but of their essential
antiquity and permanence, is still in possession of my mind.
I wander up to the bookstall, and my faith survives even
the wild spectacle of modern literature and journalism.
Even in the crudest and most clamorous aspects of the newspaper
world I still prefer the popular to the proud and fastidious.
If I had to choose between taking in the DAILY MAIL and taking
in the TIMES (the dilemma reminds one of a nightmare), I should
certainly cry out with the whole of my being for the DAILY MAIL.
Even mere bigness preached in a frivolous way is not so
irritating as mere meanness preached in a big and solemn way.
People buy the DAILY MAIL, but they do not believe in it.
They do believe in the TIMES, and (apparently) they do not buy it.
But the more the output of paper upon the modern world is
actually studied, the more it will be found to be in all its
essentials ancient and human, like the name of Charing Cross.
Linger for two or three hours at a station bookstall (as I am doing),
and you will find that it gradually takes on the grandeur
and historic allusiveness of the Vatican or Bodleian Library.
The novelty is all superficial; the tradition is all interior
and profound. The DAILY MAIL has new editions, but never a new idea.
Everything in a newspaper that is not the old human love
of altar or fatherland is the old human love of gossip.
Modern writers have often made game of the old chronicles
because they chiefly record accidents and prodigies; a church
struck by lightning, or a calf with six legs. They do not seem
to realise that this old barbaric history is the same as new
democratic journalism. It is not that the savage chronicle has
disappeared. It is merely that the savage chronicle now appears
every morning.

As I moved thus mildly and vaguely in front of the bookstall, my eye
caught a sudden and scarlet title that for the moment staggered me.
On the outside of a book I saw written in large letters, "Get On
or Get Out." The title of the book recalled to me with a sudden
revolt and reaction all that does seem unquestionably new and nasty;
it reminded me that there was in the world of to-day that utterly
idiotic thing, a worship of success; a thing that only means surpassing
anybody in anything; a thing that may mean being the most successful
person in running away from a battle; a thing that may mean being
the most successfully sleepy of the whole row of sleeping men.
When I saw those words the silence and sanctity of the railway