The engineer then pulls out a draw-head and begins to make up time. In twenty minutes he has made up an hour's time, though two miles of hoop-iron are torn from the track behind him. He sails into the eating station on time, and, while the master mechanic takes several of the coach-wheels over to the machine-shop to soak, he eats a hurried lunch.
The brakeman here gets his tin lanterns ready for the night run and fills two of them with red oil to be used on the rear coach. The fireman puts a fresh bacon-rind on the eccentric, stuffs some more cotton batting around the axles, puts a new lynch-pin in the hind wheels, sweeps the apple-peelings out of the smoking car, and he is ready.
Then comes the conductor, with his plug hat full of excursion tickets, orders, passes, and timechecks; he looks at his Waterbury watch, waves his hand, and calls "All aboard" again. It is upgrade, however, and for two miles the "spotter" has to push behind with all his might before the conductor will allow him to get on and ride.
Thus began the history of a gigantic enterprise which has grown till it is a comfort, a convenience, a luxury, and yet a necessity. It has built up and beautified the desert. It has crept beneath the broad river, scaled the snowy mountain, and hung by iron arms from the canon and the precipice, carrying the young to new lands and reuniting those long separated. It has taken the hopeless to lands of new hope. It has evaded the solitude of the wilderness, spiked down valuable land-grants, killed cheap cattle and then paid a high price for them, whooped through valleys, snorted over lofty peaks, crept through long, dark tunnels, turning the bright glare of day suddenly upon those who thought the tunnel was two miles long, roared through the night and glittered through the day, bringing alike the groom to his beautiful bride and the weeping prodigal to the moss-grown grave of his mother.
You are indeed a heartless, soulless corporation, and yet you are very essential in our business.
Bill Nye's Letter.
HOW OLD BRINDLE MET HER DEATH WITH A TRAIN.
A QUAINT EPISTLE, IN WHICH THE HUMORIST GIVES HIS EXPERIENCE WITH RAILROAD OFFICIALS—HOW HE SECURED PAY FOR A COW.
Dear Henry: Your letter stating that you had just succeeded in running your face for a new curriculum is at hand and contents noted, as the feller said when I wrote to him two years ago and told him that his cussed railroad had mashed old Brin. You remember that just as you entered on what you called your junior year, old Brin remained out all night, and your mother and me took our coffee milkless in the morning.