During his dreary exile in London, the writer Oskar Serti (Budapest, 1881 - Amsterdam, 1959) asked himself, on each occasion when he lost time in the Earl’s Court Underground station, why the users would opt to go through one automatic gate rather than another.
Why would that particular person go through the same gate each day? What common points could all those people well share, those who followed each other along the same passage?...
After more than a month of daily observation, serti wrote with an unsuspected passion a small illustrated work on the question. But the morning when he wanted to take the Underground to offer his manuscript to an editor, he found himself paralysed in front of the different gates. He who had just studied in details the specific behaviours of each passage, could simply not find himself in any of them. Preferring not to follow a way wich did not suit him, he decided to jump over the security gate.
When, unluckily, a vigilant ticket controller intercepted him in the act, Serti thought of justifying his action by showing his study. He realised then that, at the moment of his jump, his manuscript had slipped from his pocket and was scattered about on the opposite side of the gate.
Retained by his stubborn guardian, Serti had plenty of time to watch his sheets stampeded by a group of schoolchildren. He even had the leisure to ask himself why certain of them walked exclusively upon the texts, while others chose to go solely for the illustrations.