d!

With its vast shuttle of steam and shining engines, its little,
whispering telegraph office, the Great Western Railway is a part of my
body. I lay my will on the heart of London with it, or I sleep in the
old house in Lynmouth with it. I am the Great Western Railway, and the
Great Western Railway is ME. And from the heart of the roar of London
to the slow, sleepy surge of the sea in my window at Lynmouth it is
mine! Though it be iron and wood, switches, whistles, and white steam,
it is my body, and I inform it with my spirit, or I die. With the will
of God I endow it, with the glory of the world, with the desires of my
heart, and with the prayers of the hurrying men and women.

I declare that that same glory I have known before, and that I will
always know, and will never give up, in the old quiet quadrangles of
Oxford and in the deep bells and in the still waters, as in some
strange, new, and mighty Child, is in the Great Western Railway too.

When I am in the train it sings. Strangely and hoarsely It sings! I lie
down to rest. It whistles on ahead my ideals down the slope of the
world. It roars softly, while I sleep, my religion in my ears.

CHAPTER III

DEW AND ENGINES

When I was small, and wanted suddenly to play tag or duck-on-the-rock I
had a little square half-mile of boys near by to play with.

My daughter plays tag or plays dolls, any minute she likes, with a whole
city. She is not surprised at the telephone; she takes it for granted
like sunshine and milk. It is a part of the gray matter in her brain--a
whole city, six or seven square miles of it. A little mouthpiece on a
desk, a number, and two hundred little girls are hers in a minute, to
play dolls with. She thinks in miles when she plays, where I thought in
door-yards. The whole city is a part of the daily, hourly furniture of
her mind. The little gray molecules in the structure of her brain are
different from those in mine.

I have seen that Man moves over with each new generation into a bigger
body, more awful, more reverent and free than he has had before.

A few minutes ago, here where I am writing, an engine all in bright,
soft, lit-up green with little lines of yellow on it and flashing silver
feet, like a vision, swept past--through my still glass window, through
the quiet green fields--like a great, swift, gleaming whisper of London.
And now, all in six seconds, this great quiet air about me is waked to
vast vibrations of the