INTERMITTENT BOILER-FEEDING.
The case of Fred Bemis, who still murders locomotives on a road in Indiana, is instructive in this respect. Fred was originally a butcher; and, had he stuck to the cleaver, he might have passed through life as a fairly intelligent man. But he was seized with the ambition to go railroading, and struck a job as fireman. He never displayed any aptitude for the business, and was a poor fireman all his time through sheer indifference. But he had no specially bad habits; and, in the course of years, he was “set up.” He had the aptitude for seeing a thing done a thousand times without learning how to do it. All his movements with an engine were spasmodic. Starting from a station with a roaring fire and full boiler, the next stopping-point loomed ahead; and to get there as soon as possible was his only thought. He would keep the reverse-lever in the neighborhood of the “corner,” and pound the engine along. The pump would be shut off to keep the steam from going back too fast, till the water became low: then the feed would be opened wide, and the steam drowned down. In vain a heavy fire would be torn to pieces by vigorous shaking of the grates. The steam would not rally, and he would crawl into the next station at a wagon pace. A laboring blower and shaker-bar would resuscitate the energies of the engine in a few minutes if the flues and fire-box were not leaking too badly, and the injector would provide the water for starting on; but no experience of delay and trouble seemed capable of teaching Bemis the lesson how to work the engine properly. He soon became the terror of train men, and the boiler-makers worked incessantly on his fire-box. But he is still there, although he will not make an engineer if he runs for a century.