The Scotch Express

The entrance to Euston Station is of itself sufficiently imposing. It
is a high portico of brown stone, old and grim, in form a casual
imitation, no doubt, of the front of the temple of Nike Apteros, with a
recollection of the Egyptians proclaimed at the flanks. The frieze,
where of old would prance an exuberant processional of gods, is, in this
case, bare of decoration, but upon the epistyle is written in simple,
stern letters the word "EUSTON." The legend reared high by the gloomy
Pelagic columns stares down a wide avenue, In short, this entrance to a
railway station does not in any way resemble the entrance to a railway
station. It is more the front of some venerable bank. But it has another
dignity, which is not born of form. To a great degree, it is to the
English and to those who are in England the gate to Scotland.

The little hansoms are continually speeding through the gate, dashing
between the legs of the solemn temple; the four-wheelers, their tops
crowded with luggage, roll in and out constantly, and the footways beat
under the trampling of the people. Of course, there are the suburbs and
a hundred towns along the line, and Liverpool, the beginning of an
important sea-path to America, and the great manufacturing cities of the
North; but if one stands at this gate in August particularly, one must
note the number of men with gun-cases, the number of women who surely
have Tam-o'-Shanters and plaids concealed within their luggage, ready
for the moors. There is, during the latter part of that month, a
wholesale flight from London to Scotland which recalls the July throngs
leaving New York for the shore or the mountains.

The hansoms, after passing through this impressive portal of the
station, bowl smoothly across a courtyard which is in the center of the
terminal hotel, an institution dear to most railways in Europe. The
traveler lands amid a swarm of porters, and then proceeds cheerfully to
take the customary trouble for his luggage. America provides a
contrivance in a thousand situations where Europe provides a man or
perhaps a number of men, and the work of our brass check is here done by
porters, directed by the traveler himself. The men lack the memory of
the check; the check never forgets its identity. Moreover, the European
railways generously furnish the porters at the expense of the traveler.
Nevertheless, if these men have not the invincible business precision of
the check, and if they have to be tipped, it can be asserted for those
who care that in Europe one-half of the populace waits on the other half
most diligently and well.

Against the masonry of a platform, under the vaulted arch of the train-
house, lay a long string of coaches. They were painted white on the