. Pepys. We should see London then as a
great spiritual companionship, in which it is our privilege to have a
fleeting part.

ON CATCHING THE TRAIN

Thank heaven! I have caught it.... I am in a corner seat, the compartment
is not crowded, the train is about to start, and for an hour and a half,
while we rattle towards that haven of solitude on the hill that I have
written of aforetime, I can read, or think, or smoke, or sleep, or talk, or
write as I choose. I think I will write, for I am in the humour for
writing. Do you know what it is to be in the humour for writing--to feel
that there is a head of steam somewhere that must blow off? It isn't so
much that you have something you want to say as that you must say
something. And, after all, what does the subject matter? Any peg will do to
hang your hat on. The hat is the thing. That saying of Rameau fits the idea
to perfection. Some one was asking that great composer if he did not find
difficulty in selecting a subject. "Difficulty? A subject?" said Rameau.
"Not at all. One subject is as good as another. Here, bring me the _Dutch
Gazette_."

That is how I feel now, as the lights of London fade in our wake and the
fresh air of the country blows in at the window. Subject? Difficulty? Here
bring me the _Dutch Gazette_. But while any subject would serve there is
one of particular interest to me at this moment. It came into my mind as I
ran along the platform just now. It is the really important subject of
catching trains. There are some people who make nothing of catching trains.
They can catch trains with as miraculous an ease as Cinquevalli catches
half-a-dozen billiard-balls. I believe they could catch trains in their
sleep. They are never too early and never too late. They leave home or
office with a quiet certainty of doing the thing that is simply stupefying.
Whether they walk, or take a bus, or call a taxi, it is the same: they do
not hurry, they do not worry, and when they find they are in time and that
there's plenty of room they manifest no surprise.

I have in mind a man with whom I once went walking among the mountains on
the French-Italian border. He was enormously particular about trains and
arrangements the day or the week before we needed them, and he was
wonderfully efficient at the job. But as the time approached for catching a
train he became exasperatingly calm and leisured. He began to take his time
over everything and to concern himself with t