Somebody suggested the tube. Corporal Smith
consented.
He had forgotten that at Oxford Circus station the lifts have been
abolished in favour of sliding staircases. Confronted by the escalator,
Corporal Smith halted his party and informed them that they must walk
down by the ordinary stair. The escalator was not safe for blind men.
Unfortunately, Jock had sniffed a lark; the one-eyed man backed him up;
the party--elated perhaps by their tea--would not hear of anything so
humdrum as a descent by the ordinary stair. They were going on the
sliding stair. They insisted. Corporal Smith argued in vain. In vain he
exerted his (purely nominal) authority. His charges mocked him. The
one-eyed man leading, with Jock in his wake, they launched themselves at
the sliding stair. In sheer desperation Corporal Smith brought up the
rear, supporting two of the more timid venturers as best he might. None
of the group except Corporal Smith himself, as it turned out, had ever
travelled on an escalator before. But they had heard a comic song about
a sliding stair, and they wished--Jock especially--to sample this
metropolitan invention.
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