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Updated: June 12, 2025
As many as seventeen were hidden one day at one of the stations. Thousands of slaves were in this way helped to escape every year. It was a dangerous employment for the station-masters, and many were found out and fined. They paid the fines, they did not care for that; and went on helping the poor slaves.
"The situation," he said, "exacts circumspection. We are facing a perilous unknown." Then Loyer, looking at his war colleague with cynical contempt, said: "In the very improbable case of a war, don't you think, my dear colleague, that the real generals would be the station-masters?" The three Ministers went out by the private stairway. The President of the Council was waiting for them.
This is only a branch line, and I have no power to give you a pass." So that was what I had to do. I began to see myself taking a ticket at every stop and appealing to the station-master at the next. Well, the money would last longer that way, but unless I could overcome quickly the distrust which I seemed to inspire in station-masters there would not be much left for lunch.
Few sidings however inconsiderable or, as it might seem, fortuitous escaped the flattery of our prolonged sojourn. We ambled, we paused, almost we dallied with the butterflies lazily afloat over the meadow-sweet and cow-parsley beside the line; we exchanged gossip with station-masters, and received the congratulations of signalmen on the extraordinary spell of fine weather. It did not matter.
He detested asking guards, and porters, and station-masters, and people in refreshment-rooms if they remembered having seen, yesterday, a gentleman in a fur coat travelling with a young lady, of whom he felt that he had to offer only a too suggestive description.
I have myself an intense curiosity about other people's point of view, what they do when they are alone, and what they think about. Edward FitzGerald said that he wished we had more biographies of obscure persons. How often have I myself wished to ask simple, silent, deferential people, such as station-masters, butlers, gardeners, what they make of it all!
Price and I, however, insisted that the Czar's ukase to the station-masters was good only for that evening; that if we didn't take the horses immediately we should have to pay demurrage; that the curfew bell had rung; that the town gates would close at ten thirty sharp; and that if we didn't get under way at once, we should probably be arrested for riotous disturbance of the peace!
I began to ask the porters and the under station-masters who wear red caps, and the woman who sells newspapers and cigars at the stand, and the man who clips the tickets at the doors of the waiting-rooms. 'Did you see a gentleman, so and so, with a servant, so and so, and much luggage, going away by the train?
The station-masters were Russian, but frequently all their employees were of Mongol blood. Some part of the carriage gave way on the road, and it was necessary to repair it at a station. A Bouriat man-of-all-work undertook the job and performed it very well. While waiting for the repairs I saw some good specimens of iron work from the hands of native blacksmiths.
Next day, the first of the Race-Week, they took train to Doncaster. And instantly the character, both of travellers and of luggage, entirely changed, and no other business than race-business any longer existed on the face of the earth. The talk was all of horses and 'John Scott. Guards whispered behind their hands to station-masters, of horses and John Scott.
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