We shout and sing, and feel an ecstatic thrill running all over us, from the tips of our fingers down into our boots!
What a deal of power there is in a yell! The teamster screams to his horses; the plough-boy makes himself hoarse by shouting to his oxen; the fireman feels that he is doing good service when he goes tearing down the street yelling with all his might. He never would put out the fire if he couldn't yell. A hurrah elected General Harrison President of the United States, and it has won many a political battle-field. A hurrah starts the old oak from its bed. See the Executive as he sets his compact shoulders to the work, making the lever bend before him. Notice the tall form of the Judge bowing in the traces! If the rope does not break, the log is bound to come.
The two are good at pulling. They have shown their power by dragging one of the greatest enterprises of modern times over obstacles that would have discouraged men of weaker nerve. The public never will know of the hard work performed by them in starting the Northern Pacific Railroad,—how they have raised it from obscurity, from obloquy, notwithstanding opposition and prejudice. The time will come when the public will look upon the enterprise in its true light. When the road is opened from Lake Superior westward, when the traveller finds on every hand a country of surpassing richness, a climate in the Northwest as mild as that of Pennsylvania, when he sees the numberless attractions and exhaustless resources of the land, then, and not till then, will the labors of Governor Smith and his associates in carrying on this work be appreciated.
To-night they enter with all the zest of youth into the project of building a camp-fire, and tug at the rope with the enthusiasm of boyhood.
It is a strong team. Our doctor of divinity, whether in the pulpit or on the prairie, pulls with "a forty parson power," to use Byron's simile. And our M. D., whether he has hold of a gnarled oak or the stump of a molar in the mouth of a pretty young lady, is certain to master it.
A STRONG TEAM.
A member of Congress "made believe pull," as we used to say in our boyhood, but complacently smoked his pipe the while; the correspondent tipped a wink at the smoker, seized hold of a lever, shouted and yelled as if laying out all his strength, and pulled—about two pounds! But we dragged it in amid the hurrahs of the teamsters, wiped the sweat from our brows, and then through the evening sat round the blazing log, and made the air ring with our merry laughter. So we rubbed out the growing wrinkles, smoothed the lines of care, and turned back the shadow creeping up the dial.