Travels in Philadelphia/Broad Street Station
BROAD STREET STATION
Broad street station is to me a place of extraordinary fascination. Among the cloudy memories of early childhood it stands solidly, a home of thunders and shouting, of gigantic engines with their fiery droppings of coal and sudden jets of steam. It was a place which in a delighted sense of adventure was closely mixed with fear. I remember being towed along, as a very small urchin, among throngs of hasty feet and past the prodigious glamour of those huge wheels and pistons. (Juvenile eyes are very close to the ground.) Then, arrived within, the ramping horses carved opposite the head of the stairs and the great map on the northern wall were a glorious excitement to my wondering gaze. Nowadays, when I ramble about the station its enchantment is enhanced by the recollection of those early adventures. And as most people, when passing through a station, are severely intent upon their own problems and little conscious of scrutiny, it is the best of places to study the great human show. Mr. Joseph Pennell, in a thrilling drawing, has given a perfect record of Broad street's lights and tones that linger in the eye—the hurdling network of girders, the pattering files of passengers, the upward eddies of smoke.
A sense of baffling excitement and motion keeps the mind alert as one wanders about the station. In the dim, dusky twilight of the trainshed this is all the more impressive. A gray-silver haze hangs in the great arches. Against the brightness of the western opening the locomotives come gliding in with a restful relaxation of effort, black indistinguishable profiles. The locomotives are the only restful things in the scene—they and the red-capped porters, who have the priestly dignity of oracles who have laid aside all earthly passions. Most of the human elements wear the gestures of eagerness, struggle and perplexity. The Main Line commuters, it is true, seem to stroll trainward like a breed apart, with an air of leisurely conquest and assurance. They have the bearing of veterans who have conquered the devils of transportation and hold them in leash. But this superb carelessness is only factitious. Some day their time will come and they will fall like the rest of us. They will career frantically to and fro, dash to information desk and train bulletin, rummage for tickets and wipe a beaded brow. What gesture, incidentally, is so significantly human as that of mopping the forehead? If I were a sculptor at work on a symbolic statue of Man I would carve him with troubled and vacant eyes, dehydrating his brow with a handkerchief.
Take your stand by the train gate a few moments before the departure of the New York express. What a medley of types, and what a common touch of anxiety and wistfulness makes them kin! Two ladies are bidding each other a prolonged farewell. "Now, remember, 7 Howland street, Cambridge," says the departer. ""Be sure to write!" A feverish man rushes back from the train, having forgotten something, and fights his way against the line which is filing through the gate. Another man hunts dismally through all his pockets for his ticket, rocking gently and thoughtfully on his heels. The ticket seems to have vanished. He pushes his hat back on his forehead and says something to the collector. This new posture of his hat seems to aid him, for in another half minute the ticket appears in a pocket that he has already gone through several times. The official cons his watch every five seconds. A clerk, apparently from one of the ticket windows, rushes up with a long strip ticket. There is some question about a sailor with a furlough ticket to Providence. Has he gone through? Haven't seen him. The gateman claps the gate to and switches off the light. Three other men come dashing up and are let through by the kindness of the usher. Then comes the sailor galloping along with a heavy suitcase. "Here he is! Here's your ticket!" Again the gate is opened and the navy man tears down the platform. The train is already moving, but he just makes it. Far out, in the bright sunlight beyond the station, the engine can be seen pulling out, ejecting a stiff spire of smoke and horizontal billows of steam.
At the same time rumbles in the hourly express from New York. Watch the people come out. Here is the brisk little man with a brown bag, who always leads the crowd. The men from the smoker are first, puffing pipes or cigars. They all seem to know exactly where they want to go and push on relentlessly. After the main body of travelers come the Pullman passengers, usually followed by porters. Here is a girl in a very neat blue suit. Her porter carries an enormous black hat-box painted with very swagger stripes of green. She is pretty, in a rather frank way, but too dusty with powder. An actress, one supposes. A tall young man steps out from the crowd, something very rakish about him, too. She looks surprised. "Nice of me to meet you, wasn't it?" he says. They walk off together, and one notices the really admirable hang of her blue skirt, just reaching her fawn spats. Sorry she uses so much powder. Curious thing; the same young chap was back again an hour later, this time to meet a man on the next New York train. They both wore brightly burnished brown shoes and seemed to have completely mastered life's perplexities. All these little dramas were enacted to a merry undertone of constant sound: the clear chime of bells, the murmur and throb of hissing steam, the rumble of baggage trucks, the slither of thousands of feet.
There is not much kissing done when people arrive from New York, but if you will linger about the gate when the Limited gets in from Chicago you will see that humanity pays more affectionate tribute to friends arriving from that strange country. There was one odd little group of three. A man and a woman greeted another lady who arrived on the Chicago train. The two women kissed with a luxurious smacking. Then the man and the arrival kissed. The Chicago lady wore an enormous tilted hat with plumes. "Well, I'm here," she said, but without any great enthusiasm. The man was obviously frightfully glad to see her. But stand how he would, she kept the slant of her hat between her face and him. He tried valiantly to get a straight look at her. She would not meet his gaze. He put his head on one side astonishingly like a rooster, and his whole attitude expressed an earnest desire to please. When he spoke to her she answered to the other woman. She handed him her baggage checks without looking at him. Then she pointed to a very heavy package at her feet. With a weary resignation he toted it, and they moved away.
Inside the station the world is divided sharply into two halves. On the trainward side all is bustle and stir; the bright colors of news-stands and flower stalls, brisk consultation of timetables at the information desk, little telephone booths, where lights wink on and off. In one of these booths, with the door open for greater coolness, a buyer is reporting to his home office the results of an out-of-town trip. "How much did you sold of that?" he says. "He offered me a lot—pretty nice leather—he wanted seventy-five—well, listen, finally I offered him sixty-five—Oh, no, no, no, he claims it's a dollar grade—well, I don't know, it might be ninety cent maybe."
But abaft the big stairway a quiet solemnity reigns. The long benches of the waiting room seem a kind of Friends' meeting. Momently one expects to see some one rise and begin to speak. But it is not the peace of resignation; it is the peace of exhaustion. These are the wounded who have dragged themselves painfully from the onset, stricken on the great battlefield of Travel. Here one may note the passive patience of humanity, and also how pathetically it hoards its little possessions. A lady rises to get a drink of water. With what zealous care she stacks all her impediments in a neat pile—umbrella, satchel, handbag, shawl, suitcase, tippet, raincoat and baby—and confides them to her companion. A gust of that characteristic railroad restaurant odor drifts outward from the dining room—a warm, soupy blend of browned chicken-skin and crisp roll-crust. On one end of the bench are three tall bronzed doughboys, each with two service stripes and the red chevron. They have bright blue eyes and are carefully comparing their strip tickets, which seem nearly a yard long. A lady in very tight black suede slippers stilts out of the dining room. Like every one else in the waiting room she walks as though her feet hurt her. The savor of food is blown outward by electric fans. The doughboys are conferring together. They have noticed two lieutenants dining at one of the white-draped tables. This seems to enrage them. Finally they can stand it no longer. Their vast rawhide marching boots go clumping into the dining room. Every now and then the announcer comes to the head of the stairway and calls out something about a train to Harrisburg, Altoona, Pittsburgh and Chicago. There is a note of sadness in his long-drawn wail, as though it would break his heart if no one should take this train, which is a favorite of his. A few weary casuals hoist themselves from the benches, gather their belongings anew and stagger away.