There are in America at least six hundred and forty railroads, without counting the branches. Of the latter there are hundreds, and it is curious to observe how certain trunk roads resemble trees in putting out their branches and getting their growth. Thus the iron arms of the Michigan Central spread like a larch, the Chicago & Northwestern like a fern, while the Hudson River takes a straight shoot as limbless as a liberty-pole. We are apt to crowd the rhetoric sometimes, and say that railroads have taken America, and the continent is as full of fibres of iron as an oak leaf is of fibres of wood. I saw a letter the other day written by a Bishop of the Episcopal Church from his home here in America. That letter traveled a thousand miles before it struck a railroad! His diocese is in the Hudson's Bay Company's country, and is no dooryard diocese either, for it is larger than many empires.
But the locomotive ventures into improbable places for all that. Think of a ponderous engine, fashioned to grind miles under its wheels like a grist in a mill, being drawn, as one was a short time ago, under the Arch of Constantine at Rome, along the very road whereon the robe of Cicero trailed, if he didn't lift it, and the weak-eyed poet strolled! Classic ground or Holy ground, it stands a poor chance with the locomotive, for with the steam comes the newsboy, the boot-black, modern slang, irreverence, and—peanuts.
No piece of mechanism has affected so widely, diversely and powerfully, the globe and its inhabitants, as the locomotive. That a railroad should influence the weather is the very last thing that would be suspected, but it must plead guilty to the charge, for in certain regions it is almost climatarchic—a presider over climate. That being the only hard word used, the offence should be easily forgiven. Let some recording angel, like Uncle Toby's, be found to drop a tear upon it, if need be, and blot it out.
Everybody knows how the rains have descended and the floods come in regions of the continent and in seasons where and when little ever fell but dew. Number the facts from Utah to California that are being washed down into human understandings by heavy showers. There is no danger of our being claimed by Sydney Smith's genuine Mrs. Partington, if we say that somehow—and we are not bound to tell how—the railroad brings rain. Would it not be wonderful if that brace of iron bars across the continent should literally interpret the pleasant Scripture, "And the desert shall blossom as the rose"? And it looks like it. The old devices for artificial irrigation are growing useless, and territory hitherto unproductive, is beginning to do something for man. And this, not because of the pioneers to whom the railroad has made the desert possible and accessible, but because of its direct influence upon the climate. Rain-clouds west of the Rockies, that have never spoken a loud word within the memory of man, are now talking as audibly and emphatically as if thunder had been their mother-tongue from babyhood, and rank vegetation is springing where nothing was ever before sown but fire.
The vast system of iron net-work and the hair-lines of telegraphy, about enough to make a snare to catch the planet, have disturbed the electrical equilibrium, and the results are seen in the new and novel phenomena of thunder and shower. By the way, did you ever know any part of a train to be struck by lightning? There are three or four accounts on record of such an occurrence, but the testimony is doubtful and obscure. Running in what are generally deemed the most dangerous places, along the tall fences of telegraph-poles, so often shattered by lightning, and throwing up such volumes of heat, smoke and steam, all of which are supposed to be favorite thoroughfares of the mysterious agent, it seems strange that, if our scientific facts are facts at all, many accidents by lightning do not occur upon the railway. But the direction of the bolt is determined before it leaves the cloud, and a train is nothing but a slender thread trailed along the earth's surface. What the locomotive will yet do for all kinds of man—mechanic, agricultural, scientific, moral—is an unsolved problem! A glance at the initial chapter of its history assures us that it will be as marvelous in the future as it was unlooked for in the past.
CHAPTER XVIII.
DREAMING ON THE CARS.
When a man travels, what material baggage he takes is immaterial, but he leaves behind him a great deal of mental and moral impedimenta. There used to be a saying among the traders to Santa Fé, "If there is any dog in a man he will show it out on the trail." During the war, people going to the front were astonished to learn what manner of people some of their nearest neighbors really were. It is so in the world on wheels. Men and women show out wonderfully. But whatever you put on to go a-journeying, even to that new silk hat, if you must, never put on airs. They are altogether too gauzy to be warm in winter, or decent in summer. Many a woman has told you, without intending it, that the entertainment she regarded with such measureless contempt is better than anything she ever encountered at home. Clothes have become transparent as window-glass. They utterly fail as a disguise.
You grow conscious on a railway train, as nowhere else, what trifles go to make up the warp and woof of life. Thus, you catch yourself watching an old-fashioned man with an ancient hat that was beaver in its time. He takes it off and holds it in his hand. You wonder how it has come to look so like its owner. It has a character, and the character is the man's. Then the heavy roll of his coat-collar, with a padded look, reminds you of the picture of George the First, the Last, and the All-the-Time, to-wit: George Washington. You think G. W.'s face is much like a tin lantern with no holes in it to let out the light, and about as—is it profanity, or what is it?—about as stupid a face as there is going. To be sure, it has a solid look, and so has a round of beef.
You look up just then, and, yonder in the corner facing you, sits a man of sixty, frosty, Octoberish, square face, double chin, hair long and curly, pleasant eyes, all surmounted by a broad-brimmed hat. You start at the resemblance; it is as much like Benjamin Franklin, printer, as one picture is like another.
Then you wonder what that lady over across the aisle is trying to get out of that bottle with a knitting-needle. You watch, and she spears away until she brings out a little pickle. You notice a couple whispering and giggling, and making objects of themselves generally, and you marvel why, when young married people travel in the cars by sunlight, they don't let the honeymoon set, or change, or something.