XXXV
THE FLYING LOCOMOTIVE
YES, locomotives can soar—can fly—and, like Mahomet’s coffin, stand in the air; and they do these things in a blaze of glory—because the shop where they are built is not big enough to shift them about in any other way. As the engine sailed toward me I tried to make a note of it. “Why would you like to draw it?” said the manager, as I frantically went on making notes of the approaching monster. “Which end would you like up?” He made a signal, they don’t talk in these shops, it stopped and there it hung. “Bring on another,” signalled the manager—and so I drew and so the creature posed till I had finished—an excellent model in a wonderful studio.
