III.
Two hours after midnight we were once more on the cars, bound for Boston.[52]
“These long journeys,” said Irving, “are most distressing. I wonder what sort of a trip this will be. We ought to arrive at Boston, on Sunday, at about six, they say.”
“The agent of the road,” replied Mr. Palser, “tells me he hopes to make good time. But I told him that the only occasion when we have done a long journey on time has been when we had no railroad agent to take care of us. They are very good fellows, and anxious to help us, but they have been unfortunate. Our flat baggage car is a trouble. You will remember that the Erie could not take it, and some of the other companies consider it an extra risk. It affords an excuse for not exceeding a certain speed. Besides this, we have not had so much snow in America for over twenty years as this winter. Our trains have been snowed up, and this has occasioned all sorts of delays, as you know. But I hope we will get through to Boston in good time.”
We did not, “by a large majority,” as Bardwell Slote says. It was a tedious and unsatisfactory journey. So soon as we left the West Shore line we began to have trouble. It was on a short section of an unimportant road that we encountered most delay, the character of which will be best illustrated by a brief conversation between Irving and several other persons:—
“Well, what is the matter now, George?” Irving asked the colored conductor of the private car.
“Oh, this is the third time he’s stopped in the woods to tinker up his darned old engine,” said George; “seems it needs it!”
Everybody laughed at this rough criticism of the engineer and his locomotive.
“Stops in the woods, eh?” says Irving,—“that nobody may see him? But suppose another train comes along?”
“If the brakeman should neglect to go back and flag it, there might be no performance at the Boston Theatre on Monday,” said Palser. “That is how Wagner, the car-builder, lost his life. He was killed in one of his own cars, on the New York Central. The train stopped suddenly,—it is said somebody on board pulled the check-string in joke,[53]—and an oncoming train, not being warned, ran into them, and Mr. Wagner was killed.”
“Ah,” Irving replied, “there must have been a good deal of flag-signalling done on this journey of ours, seeing how often we have stopped.”
“Yes, that’s so; yah, yah!” remarks the privileged colored servant.
“I don’t think any of the tracks we have crossed are as good as the Pennsylvania,” said Irving; “they are certainly not as good as the Midland or Great Western in England. The West Shore road is evidently a fine one; but I have more than once during our travels been reminded of a story I came across recently, relating to a passenger’s question: ‘We’ve struck a smoother strip of road, have we not?’ The Arkansas railway conductor replied, ‘No, we’ve only run off the track.’”
“Yah! yah!” shouted George, as he disappeared to tell the story to Peter in the kitchen.
“The newspaper that told the story added, as American journals are apt to do, a line or two of its own, to the effect that the Arkansas conductor’s reply was almost as uncomplimentary as that of an Eastern conductor, who, upon being discharged, said, ‘Well, I was intending to quit anyway, for there is nothing left of your old road but two streaks of iron rust and a right of way.’”