Swords and Plowshares/Rapid Transit
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THE world is drunk with rapid transit.
Electric cars, overcrowded with men and women, rush up the street.
Other cars as heavily laden rush down in the opposite direction.
At the great stations trains are endlessly coming in and going out, hundreds in a day.
In the river, steamers, big and little, press onward north and south, while ferry-boats ply like shuttles back and forth across their foaming tracks.
Up spring the lifts, one after another, full to overflowing, ten, fifteen, twenty stories, the fastest not stopping below the tenth.
Down they drop again like stones in a well.
All mankind is excitedly darting hither and thither like insects on a stagnant pool.
Everybody wants to be somewhere else and is doing his best to get there.
No one stays contentedly where he is.
Whiz and whirr, come and go, back and forth, up and down, to and fro, faster and faster and faster, until—
Until what, indeed? Who can say?
Electric cars, overcrowded with men and women, rush up the street.
Other cars as heavily laden rush down in the opposite direction.
At the great stations trains are endlessly coming in and going out, hundreds in a day.
In the river, steamers, big and little, press onward north and south, while ferry-boats ply like shuttles back and forth across their foaming tracks.
Up spring the lifts, one after another, full to overflowing, ten, fifteen, twenty stories, the fastest not stopping below the tenth.
Down they drop again like stones in a well.
All mankind is excitedly darting hither and thither like insects on a stagnant pool.
Everybody wants to be somewhere else and is doing his best to get there.
No one stays contentedly where he is.
Whiz and whirr, come and go, back and forth, up and down, to and fro, faster and faster and faster, until—
Until what, indeed? Who can say?