"Well, I never saw anything like that before," said one of them. The President said nothing.
"Run to seed," quoted the oldest of the Directors, "rather good expression!"
"Damned good seed, gentlemen," said the President, a little shortly. "Duval and Upton.—That fellow's father was in my command. Died at Gettysburg. He'd fight hell."
Jim got a place—brakeman on a freight-train.
That night Jim wrote a letter home. You'd have thought he had been elected President.
It was a hard life: harder than most. The work was hard; the fare was hard; the life was hard. Standing on top of rattling cars as they rushed along in the night around curves, over bridges, through tunnels, with the rain and snow pelting in your face, and the tops as slippery as ice. There was excitement about it, too: a sense of risk and danger. Jim did not mind it much. He thought of his mother and Kitty.
There was a freemasonry among the men. All knew each other; hated or liked each other; nothing negative about it.
It was a bad road. Worse than the average. Twice the amount of traffic was done on the single track that should have been done. Result was men were ground up—more than on most roads. More men were killed in proportion to the number employed than were killed in service during the war. The esprit de corps was strong. Men stood by their trains and by each other. When a man left his engine in sight of trouble, the authorities might not know about it, but the men did. Unless there was cause he had to leave. Sam Wray left his engine in sight of a broken bridge after he reversed. The engine stopped on the track. The officers never knew of it; but Wray and his fireman both changed to another road. When a man even got shaky and began to run easy, the superintendent might not mind it; but the men did: he had to go. A man had to have not only courage but nerve.
Jim was not especially popular among men. He was reserved, slow, awkward. He was "pious" (that is, did not swear). He was "stuck up" (did not tell "funny things," by which was meant vulgar stories; nor laugh at them either). And according to Dick Rail, he was "stingy as h—l."