CONDUCTORS’ EXPERIENCES.
“There is a sameness about our lives which makes it monotonous,” said Conductor B—as he lit a cigar and reflectively tossed the match into the gutter.
“Yes, but you have a variety, surely.”
“Yes, but this variety becomes the regular thing, and I tell you it gets monotonous; still what we see may perhaps be worth reproducing in print. The latest thing that I remember as peculiar is this: I noticed a well-dressed, middle-aged lady on the train every day going to Toronto and coming back. She was as regular as clockwork, always wore the same highly respectable clothes, never had any baggage, always sat alone and never spoke to me. She made the trip with us every day for two weeks steady and I began to get interested in her. Just when I was getting thoroughly puzzled as to who she could possibly be, she disappeared.”
“Well.”
“Well, she was a mad woman, that’s all. As crazy as a bedbug and this railroading was a mad fancy. She broke out bad at last and they had to put her in the asylum. It makes me cold to think of what she might have done had she broke out in the car.”
“Have you thrown off any tramps?”
“Oh, that’s an old story and we get used to it by degrees. I remember one thoroughbred, however, who was a dandy. I was running from Hamilton and I found out he had neither money nor ticket, so I put him off at Waterdown. I thought that settled him, but in going through the cars I found him on the rear platform, looking as comfortable as you please. I jilted him off at Bronte and told him that if he got on again I would paralyze him. When we reached Oakville the station-master told me that a man had ridden in on the cowcatcher. I went forward and caught my joker sitting on the pilot smoking a clay pipe.