The Wrong Emphasis.
He was a zealous brakeman with a very loud voice. I should have noticed his voice anyway, but I had a headache, and at his first utterance his voice became my most absorbing interest. It had a peculiar rasping quality, and it went through my tortured ears like a saw—a very rusty but vicious saw. You see I could not help noticing what that brakeman was shouting.
And it was this:
"Th' nex' STA—TION Cot'g F'm."
That performance led me to observe with care his following effort, to wit:
"Th' nex' STA—TION Al'st'n."
No one could be in doubt that a station was coming, but what that station might be no one could form the least idea.
So it went on down the line:
"Th' nex' STA-TION Br'tn."
"Th' nex' STA-TION Fn'l."
"Th' nex' STA-TION N'tn."
If I had not been compelled to pay my entire attention to my splitting head, I really think I should have taken that brakeman aside and spoken to him, as man to man: "My dear fellow, we know that we are traveling amid stations. Spare us further iteration of that fact. I myself happen to know perfectly well what these stations are. It is barely possible, however, that there is in this car some stranger—some lone, forlorn stranger —who has not the geographical knowledge into which I have grown through the past eighteen years. It is on behalf of that supposable stranger that I make my appeal. Could you not—will you not—shift the emphasis? We all know by this time that you can shout the word 'station,' that you are a master hand-or rather a master voice—at it. Your elocution is perfect, in that one word. Now, will you not kindly give that stranger, who may perhaps be unsuspectingly near his destination, a sample of your ability in the pronunciation of proper names? I venture thus to address you, honored sir, pro bono publico."
I did not say anything of the sort, which was quite as well, judging from the amount of change produced by certain other railroad expostulations of mine. That silence gave me time for a little further thought in the matter. "Why," said I to myself, "is not this brakeman a very fair sample of all of us, continually repeating the non-essentials, the meaningless trifles of life, the things everybody knows, and leaving the great words, the worth-while words, the words people are waiting for and longing to hear—leaving them unuttered? The words of love. The words of loyalty. The words of confession. The words of promise. The words of cheer. Quite as well, after all, not to pose before this zealous but unphilosophical brakeman as a superior critic. 'We're all pore critturs.' "