ends. And while a warfare that goes on without truce necessarily
develops its own jokes, informalities, callousnesses, disregard of
wounds and gruesome sights, yet deep in their souls the units never
forget that they are drilled and regimented for struggle. We stood
the other evening with a Freeport man in the baggage compartment at
the front of a train leaving Brooklyn. We two had gained the
bull's-eye window at the nose of the train and sombrely watched the
sparkling panorama of lights along the track. Something had gone
wrong with the schedule that evening, and the passengers of the 5:27
had been shunted to the 5:30. As fellow mariners will, we discussed
famous breakdowns of old and the uncertainties of the commuter's
life. "Yes," said our companion, "once you leave home you never know
when you'll get back." And he smiled the passive, placable smile of
the experienced commuter.

It is this reasonable and moderate temper that makes the commuter
the seed wherewith a new generation shall be disseminated. He faces
troubles manifold without embittered grumbling. His is a new kind of
Puritanism, which endures hardship without dourness. When, on
Christmas Eve, the train out of Jamaica was so packed that the aisle
was one long mass of unwillingly embraced passengers, and even the
car platforms were crowded with shivering wights, and the conductor
buffeted his way as best he could over our toes and our parcels of
tinsel balls, what was the general cry? Was it a yell against the
railroad for not adding an extra brace of cars? No, it was
good-natured banter of the perspiring little officer as he struggled
to disentangle himself from forests of wedged legs. "You've got a
fine, big family in here," they told him: "you ought to be proud of
us." And there was a sorrowing Italian who had with him a string of
seven children who had tunnelled and burrowed their way down the