I have seen various causes of demoralisation
learnedly pointed out in reports and
speeches, and charges to grand juries; but,
most demoralising thing I know, is
Luggage. I have come to the conclusion that
the moment Luggage begins to be always
shooting about a neighbourhood, that
neighbourhood goes out of its mind. Everybody
wants to be off somewhere. Everybody does
every thing in a hurry. Everybody has
the strangest ideas of its being vaguely his or
her business to go "down the line." If any
Fast-train could take it, I believe the whole
neighbourhood of which I write: bricks,
stones, timber, ironwork, and everything else:
would set off down the line.

Why, only look at it! What with houses
being pulled down and houses being built up,
is it possible to imagine a neighbourhood less
collected in its intellects? There are not
fifty houses of any sort in the whole place
that know their own mind a month. Now,
a shop says, "I'll be a toy-shop."
Tomorrow it say, "No I won't; I'll be a
milliner's." Next week it says, "No I
won't; I'll be a stationer's." Next week
it says, "No I won't; I'll be a Berlin wool
repository." Take the shop directly
opposite my house. Within a year, it has gone
through all these changes, and has likewise
been a plumber's painter's and glazier's, a
tailor's, a broker's, a school, a lecturing-hall,
and a feeding-place, "established to supply the
Railway public with a first-rate sandwich and
a sparkling glass of Crowley's Alton Ale for
threepence."  I have seen the different
people enter on these various lines of
business, apparently in a sound and healthy state
of mind. I have seen them, one after
another, go off their heads with looking
at the cabs rattling by, top-heavy with
luggage, the driver obscured by boxes and
portmanteaus crammed between his legs, and
piled on the footboard—I say, I have seen
them with my own eyes, fired out of their
wits by luggage, put up the shutters, and set
off down the line.

In the old state of the neighbourhood, if
any young party was sent to the Norwich
Castle to see what o'clock it was, the solid
information would be brought back—say,
for the sake of argument, twenty minutes
to twelve. The smallest child in the
neighbourhood who can tell the clock, is now
convinced that it hasn't time to say twenty
minutes to twelve, but comes back and jerks
out, like a little Bradshaw, "Eleven forty."
Eleven forty!

Mentioning the Norwich Castle, reminds
me of J. Wigzell. That man is a type of
the neighbourhood. He used to wear his
shirt-sleeves and his stiff drab trowsers, like
any other publican; and if he went out
twice in a year, besides going to the
Licensed Victuallers' Festival, it was as
much as he did. What is the state of that
man now? His pantaloons must be railway
checks; his upper garment must be a
cut-away coat, perfectly undermined by travelling
pockets; he must keep a time-bill in his
waistcoat—besides the two immense ones, UP
and DOWN, that are framed in the bar—
he must have a macintosh and a railway
rug always lying ready on a chair; and he must
habitually start off down the line, at five
minutes' notice. Now, I know that J. Wigzell
has no business down the line; he has no
more occasion to go there than a Chinese. The
fact is, he stops in the bar until he is
rendered perfectly insane by the Luggage he sees
flying up and down the street; then, catches
up his macintosh and railway rug; goes
down the line; gets out at a Common, two
miles from a town; eats a dinner at the
new little Railway Tavern there, in a choking
hurry; comes back again by the next Up-train;
and feels that he has done business!

We dream, in this said neighbourhood,
of carpet-bags and packages. How can
we help it? All night long, when passenger
trains are flat, the Goods trains
come in, banging and whanging over the
turning-plates at the station like the siege of
Sebastopol. Then, the mails come in; then,
the mail-carts come out; then, the cabs set in
for the early parliamentary; then, we are in
for it through the rest of the day. Now, I
don't complain of the whistle, I say nothing
of the smoke and steam, I have got used to
the red-hot burning smell from the Breaks
which I thought for the first twelvemonth
was my own house on fire, and going to
burst out; but, my ground of offence is the
moral inoculation of the neighbourhood. I
am convinced that there is some mysterious
sympathy between my hat on my head, and
all the hats in hat-boxes that are always
going down the line. My shirts and stockings
put away in a chest of drawers, want to
join the multitude of shirts and stockings that
are always rushing everywhere, Express, at
the rate of forty mile an hour. The trucks that
clatter with such luggage, full trot, up and
down the platform, tear into our spirits, and
hurry us, and we can't be easy.

In a word, the Railway Terminus Works
themselves are a picture of our moral state.
They look confused and dissipated, with an
air as if they were always up all night, and
always giddy. Here, is a vast shed that was
not here yesterday, and that may be pulled
down to-morrow; there, a wall that is run
up until some other building is ready; there,
an open piece of ground, which is a quagmire
in the middle, bounded on all four sides by a
wilderness of houses, pulled down, shored up,
broken-headed, crippled, on crutches, knocked
about and mangled in all sorts of ways, and
billed with fragments of all kinds of
ideas. We are, mind and body, an unsettled
neighbourhood. We are demoralized by the
contemplation of luggage in perpetual motion,
My conviction is, that you have only to circulate
luggage enough—it is a mere question of