FullReads

“Our line was the first line that had them. We were running our lightning express on the `Great Alleghanian.’ We were in opposition to everybody, made close connections, served supper on board, and our passengers only were sure of the night-boat at St. Louis. Those were the days of river-boats, you know. We introduced the palace feature on the railroad; and very successful it was. I was an engineer. I had a first-rate character, and the best wages of any man on the line. Never put me on a dirt-dragger or a lazy freight loafer, I tell you. No, sir! I ran the expresses, and nothing else, and lay off two days in the week, besides. I don’t think I should have thought of it but for Todhunter, who was my palace conductor.”

Again this IT, which bad appeared so mysteriously in what the man said before. I asked no question, but listened, really interested now, in the hope I should find out what IT was; and this the reader will learn. He went on, in a hurried way:–

“Todhunter was my palace conductor. One night he was full, and his palace was hot, and smelled bad of whale- oil. We did not burn petroleum then. Well, it was a splendid full moon in August; and we were coming down grade, making up the time we had lost at the Brentford junction. Seventy miles an hour she ran if she ran one. Todhunter had brought his cigar out on the tender, and was sitting by me. Good Lord! it seems like last week.

“Todhunter says to me, `Joslyn,’ says he, `what’s the use of crooking all round these valleys, when it would be so easy to go across?’ You see, we were just beginning to crook round, so as to make that long bend there is at Chamoguin; but right across the valley we could see the stern lights of Fisher’s train: it was not more than half a mile away, but we should run eleven miles before we came there.”

I knew what Mr. Joslyn meant. To cross the mountain ranges by rail, the engineers are obliged to wind up one side of a valley, and then, boldly crossing the head of the ravine on a high arch, to wind up the other side still, so that perhaps half an hour’s journey is consumed, while not a mile of real distance is made. Joslyn took out his pencil, and on the back of an envelope drew a little sketch of the country; which, as it happened, I still preserve, and which, with his comments, explains his whole story completely. “Here we are,” said he. “This black line is the Great Alleghanian,–double track, seventy pounds to the yard; no figuring off there, I tell you. This was a good straight run, down grade a hundred and seventy-two feet on the mile. There, where I make this X, we came on the Chamoguin Valley, and turned short, nearly north. So we ran wriggling about till Drums here, where we stopped if they showed lanterns,–what we call a flag- station. But there we got across the valley, and worked south again to this other X, which was, as I say, not five-eighths of a mile from this X above, though it had taken us eleven miles to get there.”

He had said it was not more than half a mile; but this half-mile grew to five-eighths as he became more accurate and serious.

“Well,” said he, now resuming the thread of his story, “it was Todhunter put it into my head. He owns he did. Todhunter says, says he, `Joslyn, what’s the use of crooking round all these valleys, when it would be so easy to go across?’

“Well, sir, I saw it then, as clear as I see it now. When that trip was done, I had two days to myself,–one was Sunday,–and Todhunter had the same; and he came round to my house. His wife knew mine, and we liked them. Well, we fell talking about it; and I got down the Cyclopaedia, and we found out there about the speed of cannon-balls, and the direction they had to give them. You know this was only talk then; we never thought what would come of it; but very curious it all was.”