RUNNING WORN-OUT ENGINES.
Some of our most successful engineers, the men who pull our most important trains daily on time, attribute their good fortune in avoiding delays, to training they received in youth, while running or firing worn-out engines that could only be kept going by constant attention and labor. In such cases men must resort to innumerable makeshifts to get over the road; they have frequently to dissect the machinery to remedy defects; they learn in the impressive school of experience how a broken-down engine can best be taken home, and how breaking down can best be prevented. Firemen and young engineers, generally feel aggrieved at being assigned to run on worn-out engines,—the scrap heaps as they are called: but the man who has not passed through this ordeal has missed a Golconda of experience; his potentialities are petrified without reaching action.