Wherefore?
Many things struck me as strange when I went to England, but per haps the most entire sensation of novelty came from the railroads. The funny little engines—that must be powerful though they are little; the long trains of tiny coaches; the bewildering array of first-class, and second-class, and third-class; the guard who slammed the doors after you; the cozy apartments where the passengers sit in two rows facing one another, their "luggage" wedged between their feet or piled in toppling masses on the narrow shelf behind—all this interests and amuses the American traveler who sees it for the first time.
One point of the performance seemed to me more than amusing, it was weird. It was when the guard came around—as he not always did, for there was a pleasing uncertainty in such matters—to inspect the tickets. And the guard's invariable formula was "Wherefore?"
At least it sounded like "Wherefore?" And for a long time I was quite perplexed by the interrogation. I handed out my ticket as I saw the others doing, and debated in the meantime the significance of that demand, "Wherefore?"
At length it dawned upon my stupid cogitations that what was said was not "Wherefore?" but "Where for?" "For where are you bound?" But the question, for all that, never lost its weird suggestiveness.
Hardly too often can that query be raised. Would that an English guard might stand at the outset of all my journeys in life, and ask me "Wherefore?" and insist upon a satisfactory reply! Why are you setting out? Why are you making this change in business? Why are you giving up that employment? Why are you going to this meeting or that amusement? Why are you about to make this call? Why are you reading this book? writing this letter? studying this lesson? Why? Why? Wherefore?
So much of our living is at haphazard. We jump into the first car that comes along. What is its destination? Never mind. Are we prepared for the journey? Never mind. Have we funds for the trip? Never mind. Is our luggage on board? Never mind. Are our friends with us? Never mind. We will go as far as this train takes us, and then we will get on to another train, and so we will journey through the day and the week and the year and the life. Is this much of an exaggeration of the way most folks live?
Heirs of eternity! Ye travelers toward that better country which requires for passport at the entrance only one thing—a well-journeyed life on earth, does it make no difference what trains you are on, what stations you stop at, what scenes you pass through? Is there in all the range of possible interrogations a single one that should more often ring in your ears than this of the English guards: "Wherefore, wherefore, wherefore"?