Note 75 — Chapter VIII

There is only one part or portion of railway practice which, with all our railway experience, we are unable to account for. Yet the practice is universal. We (always in the singular number, we are plural, editorially, only) have travelled in a great many parts of the world, but wherever we have gone we have never found but one undeviating and unalterable rule among the door-opening and the door-closing portion of the railway community. Is it an instinct or an abstract idea with them that the door of a compartment cannot be closed unless the closing be accompanied with a loud and violent bang, which pleases nobody and sets nervous persons into a state of glowing trepidation? Or is there a masonry among the officials of this grade, from participation in which the higher classed portion of the railway fraternity is excluded, the secret of the craft being that all railway carriage doors must be banged as they close them? Dear colleagues of the class of carriage door shutters, country station masters, inspectors, ticket collectors, guards of the first class, guards of the second, and temporary guards, foremen porters, ordinary porters and good-looking porters, porters of the strong back, and porters of brachial muscle much developed, let us entreat and implore you to retire from the brotherhood and learn to close carriage doors gently, quietly, and as becomes your gentle natures. There is a Latin proverb which means do your work vigorously, but be gentle in the mode of doing it,—suaviter in modo, fortiter in re. One word from a cordial friend to a wise man, suffices.