Chapter 5

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. A
mysterious 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