A DREAM IN THE "CABOOSE."
A first thought of the life of an engineer would be that it was a life peculiarly exhilarating; that in the mind of an engineer the rush and flow of strong feeling and emotion would constantly be felt; that the every-day incidents of his life would keep his nerves continually on the stretch, and that lassitude would never overtake him. But such is not the case. I know of no life that a man could live which would more certainly produce stagnation than it. Every day, in sunshine or storm, cold or heat, light or darkness, he goes through the same scenes, bearing the same burdens of care and responsibility, facing the same dangers, braving grim death ever and all the time until he loses fear, and the novelty of the at first exhilarating effort to conquer space and distance, and make time of no account, wears away, till danger becomes monotonous, and only an occasional scene of horror checkers the unchanging current of his every-day life. He knows every tie on the road; he knows that here is a bad curve, there a weak bridge, from either of which he may at any time, by the most probable of possibilities, be hurled to his death; and still every day he rides his "iron horse," of fiery heart and demon pulse, over the weak places and the strong, posted at the very front of the procession, which any one of a thousand contingencies would make a funeral train. He passes the same stations, blows his whistle at the same point, sees the same men at work in the same fields, with the same horses that they used last year and the year before. Two lines of iron stretch before him, to demand and receive his earnest scrutiny every day, precisely as they have every day for years.
He meets the same men on other trains at the same places, and bids them "hail" and "good-bye" with the same uncertainty of ever seeing them again that he has always felt, and which has grown so sadly wearisome.
He alone knows and appreciates the chances against him, but his daily bread depends upon his running them, so with a resolute will that soon gets to be the merest trusting to luck, he goes ahead, controlled by the same rules, which always have the same dreary penalties attached to them when violated,—a maimed and disfigured body for the balance of his days, or a sudden and inglorious death.
If one of his intimate companions gets killed, he can only bestow a passing thought upon it, for he has not been unexpectant of it, and he knows full well that the same accident may at the same place make it his turn next, as he passes over the same road every day, running the same chances, as did his friend just gone.
I had, while I was on the H—— road, a particular friend, an engineer. We were inseparable, and were both of us, alike, given to fits of despondency, at which times we would, with choking dread, bid each other farewell, and "hang around" the telegraph office to hear the welcome "O K" from the various stations, signifying that our trains had passed "on time" and "all right."
One Saturday night, when my engine was to "lay over" for the Sunday at the upper end of the road, I determined to go back to N——. The only train down that night, was the one o'clock "night freight," which Charley, my friend, was to tow with the "Cumberland," a heavy, clumsy "coal-burner." I went to the engine-house, and sat down with Charley, to smoke and talk till his "leaving time" came. He had the blues that night, and after we had talked awhile, I had them too. So we sat there slowly puffing our pipes, recalling gloomy tales of our own, and of others' experience; telling of unlucky engines (a favorite superstition with many engineers), and of unlucky men, and of bad places on the road, weak bridges, loose rails, shelving rocks, and bad curves, until we had got ourselves into the belief that nothing short of a miracle could possibly enable even a hand-car to pass over the road in any thing like safety. Had any of the passengers who daily passed over the road, in the comparative safety of its sumptuous coaches, been there and heard our description of the road, I guess they would have taken lodgings at the nearest hotel, sooner than have ridden over the road that night, towed by that engine, which Charley had more than once characterized as a "deathtrap" and "man-killer," and proven her right to the name by alluding to the four men she had killed. At length the hours had dragged themselves along, and the "Cumberland" was coupled to the train. As I started for the "Caboose," Charley said to me, "The 'Cumberland' always was and always will be an unlucky engine, and blamed if I know but she will kill me to-night, so let's shake hands, and good-bye." We shook hands, and I clambered into the "Caboose," having, it must be confessed, a sneaking kind of good feeling to think that I was at the rear instead of the front end of those forty cars, especially as the engine was one that, despite my reason and better judgment, I more than half-believed was "cursed" with "ill-luck;" by which I mean, she was peculiarly liable to fatal accidents. Well, I curled myself up on one of the seats and prepared for sleep; not, though, in just the frame of mind I would choose in order to secure "pleasant slumbers" and "sweet dreams." At first my sleep was fitful; the opening of the door, as the hands frequently went out or came in; the cessation of the jar and rumble when the train stopped; the changing of position as I tossed about in my fitful sleep—these all would wake me. At last, however, I dropped to sleep, and slept long and soundly. Strange dreams, fraught with terror, filled with wild and fantastic objects, danced over and controlled my mind. I was placed in positions of the most awful dread; I was on engines of inconceivable power, powerless to control them, and they ran with the velocity of light into long trains laden with smiling women and romping children, whose shrieks mingled with the curses of their husbands and fathers, who said it was my fault, and cursed me to lingering tortures. Then the scene would change. I would be on a long straight track, mounted on an engine which seemed a devil broken loose, and bent on a mission of death which I could not stir to stop; while away in the distance was another engine, coming towards me, and I felt, by intuition, that it was Charley, and then I would see his white and pallid face, clammy with the sweat of terror, and his long black hair swept back from his forehead, while agony, despair, and the miserable, hopeless fear of instant and horrible death shone with lurid, fierce, unnatural fire from his dark blue eye, and I seemed to know that every one I held dear was on his train; that my sisters were there looking out of the window, gaily laughing and watching for the next station, where my train was to meet theirs, and my mother sat smilingly by, looking on, while other friends that I loved were saying kind words of me, who, in another instant, would be upon them with a fiendish, fiery engine of death. I would shut my eyes, and the scene would change again. I would be skirting the edges of deep, dark precipices, and while I looked, shuddering, down into the dark and sombre depths, my whole train would go over the bank and down, down—still farther down it plunged—till I seemed to have gone far enough for the nether depths. A sudden tremendous jar woke me, and I sprang to my feet from the floor to which I had been hurled, and found myself in utter darkness. For an instant I did not know where I was, but I soon recalled myself and started out of the "Caboose," fully convinced that some awful calamity had happened to the train, and bound to know, in the shortest possible time, whether Charley or any of the rest of the hands were hurt. I soon saw a light, and hallooed to know what was the matter. "Nothing," answered Charley's well-known voice. "Well," says I, "you make a deuce of a fuss doing nothing." I told him how I was awakened, and we started back to see what was the matter. We found that, in throwing the "Caboose" in upon the branch track, he had given it too much headway, and there being no brakeman on it to check its speed, it had hit the tie laid across the rail with sufficient force to throw me from the seat and put out the only lamp in the car. So we went home, laughing heartily; but I never prepared myself for another midnight ride in the "Caboose" of a freight train by telling horrid stories just before I started.