John A. Hill

“ My heart went out to you early in our acquaintance, and one day the thought to get started as a fireman with you shot into my brain and was acted upon at once. After the first move there was no going back, and I have acted my part well; I have even been a good fireman. I am strong, healthy, and happy when on the road with you. I love the life, hard as it is, and can't think of giving it up, and—and you, Jim.'
"And then she broke down, and cried as only a woman can.
"I took both her hands in mine and kissed her—think of kissing your fireman on the engine—and told her that we could be happy yet. ”

“ I remember, one night, Jack McCabe—"Whisky Jack," we used to call him—made some mean remark about the Mormons in general and Joe in particular, and Joe replied: "I don't propose to defend the Mormon faith; it's as good as any, to my mind. I don't propose to judge or misjudge any man by his belief or absence of belief. All that I have got to say is, that the Mormon religion is a practical religion. They don't give starving women a tract, or tramps jobs on the stone-pile. The women get bread, and the tramps work for pay. ”

“ A man that could write that letter, couldn't run away. The last sentence in his letter proved that. It said: "Remember, dear Madelene, that somewhere, somehow, I am thinking of you always; that whether you see me or not, you will some day come to know that I love your soul, not your face; that your life is dear to me, and no calamity can make any difference." ”

“ Marie came to our house regularly, and I had good opportunity to study her. She was a sensible little creature, and, to my mind, just the girl for Miles, as Miles was just the man for her. But she had confided to my wife the fact that she never, never could consent to marry and settle down in the regulation, humdrum way; she wanted to marry a hero, some one she could look up to—a king among men.
My wife told her that kings and heroes were scarce just then, and that a lot of pretty good women managed to be comparatively happy with common railroad men. ”

“ Ed was as black as a negro, and swearing about coal-burners in general and this one in particular, and made so much noise with his fire-irons after we started, that the old man came over and sat behind me, so as to be able to talk.
"I noticed his long, slim hand on the top of the reverse-lever."
The first time I looked around after getting out of the yard, I noticed his long slim hand on the top of the reverse-lever. Did you ever notice how it seems to make an ex-engineer feel better and more satisfied to get his hand on the reverse-lever and feel the life-throbs of the great giant under him? ”

“ Religion is goodness and justice and honesty; no man needs a sky-pilot to lay a course for him, for he alone knows where the channel, and the rocks, and the bar of his own heart are—look into your hearts.'
"Captain Burrows stood with his hat in his hand, and bowed as if in prayer, and all the old tars bowed as reverently as if the most eloquent divine was exhorting an unseen power in their behalf. The new men followed the example of the old. ”

“ Yes, sir; the baby is a heart-breaker on dress-parade, and the ten-wheeler is a whale on business, and if they don't jump the track, you watch out for some express speed that will make the canals sick, see if they don't."
Without giving me time to say a word, he was off again.
"You ought to seen 'em start out, nary a slip, cutting off square as a die, small one ahead speaking her little piece chipper and fast on account of her smaller wheels, and the ten-wheeler barking bass, steady as a clock, with a hundred-and-enough on the gauge, a full throttle, and half a pipe of sand. ”

“ Maybe you think Jim and I didn't go over the history of the "front." "Out at the front" is the pioneer's ideal of railroad life. To a man who has put in a few years there the memory of it is like the memory of marches, skirmishes, and battles in the mind of the veteran soldier. I guess we started [Pg 49] at the lowest numbered engine on the road, and gossiped about each and every crew. ”

“ Well, it was some months before the engine was ready for the road, and in that time I got pretty well acquainted with Miss Reynolds. She was mighty plain, but sharp as a buzz-saw. I don't think she was really homely, but she'd never have been arrested for her beauty. There was something 'fetching' about her appearance—you couldn't help liking her. She was intelligent, and it was such a novelty to find a woman who knew the smoke stack from the steam chest. I didn't fall in love with her at all, but I liked to talk to her over the work. She told me her story ”

“ All this land is fertile when it can be brought under irrigating ditches and watered, but here it lies out almost like a desert. It is sparsely inhabited along the little streams by a straggling off-shoot of the Mexican race; yet once in a while a fine place is to be seen, like an oasis in the Sahara, the home of some old Spanish Don, with thousands of cattle or sheep ranging on the plains, or perhaps the headquarters of some enterprising cattle company. ”

“ On the flat, hard-baked plains, the water makes no impression, but on a railroad grade, be it ever so slight, the tendency is to dig pitfalls. I have seen a little stream of water, just enough to fill the ditches on each side of the track, take out all the dirt, and keep the ties and track afloat until the water was gone, then drop them into a hole eight or ten feet deep, or if the wash-out was short, leave them suspended, looking safe and sound, to lure some poor engineer and his mate to death. ”

“ These animals are large and fierce; they do not go in packs, like the smaller and more cowardly breeds of wolves, but in pairs, or, at most, six together. A pair of them will attack a man even when he is mounted, and lucky is he if he is well armed and cool enough to despatch one before it fastens its fangs in his horse's throat or his own thigh.
As the brave girl ran, she cast about for some means of escape or place of refuge. She decided to run to the railroad track and climb a telegraph pole—a feat which, owing to her free life on the ranch, she was perfectly capable of. ”

“ Well, Jim, if I ain't ashamed of you! There ain't no one but you; coming into general headquarters with a flutter in the stack, so full that you can't whistle, air-pump a-squealing 'count of water, smeared from stack to man-hole, headlight smoked and glimmery, don't know your own rights, kind o' runnin' wildcat, without proper signals, imagining you're first section with a regardless order. You want to blow out, man, and trim up, get your packing set out and carry less juice. ”

“ Three times before now someone has seen Madelene's face, twice I told this story, and then we moved away; once I told it and trusted, and it was not repeated. Madelene can stand being a mystery and wondered at, but she cannot stand pity and curiosity. As for you, old Chum, I haven't even asked you not to repeat what I have told you—I know you won't."
After a long while, I turned to Hopkins and said: "And yet, Hopkins, fools say there is no romance in railroad life. This is a story worth reading, and some day I'd like to write it." ”

“ Gun was a bachelor; he came to us from the Pacific side, and told me once that he first went west on account of a woman, but—begging Mr. Kipling's pardon—that's another story.
"I don't think I'd care to double-crew my mill," Gun would say when the conversation turned to matrimony. "I've been raised to keep your own engine and take care of it, and pull what you could. In double-heading there's always a row as to who ought to go ahead and enjoy the scenery or stay behind and eat cinders." ”

“ The second Sunday after Miles was hurt, Marie was down, and I thought I'd have a little fun with her, and see how she regarded Miles.
"There's quite a romance connected with Diston's affair," said I at the dinner table, rather carelessly. "There is a young lady visiting here in town—I hear she is very wealthy—who saw Miles when we took him off his engine. She sends flowers every day, calls him her hero, and is just crazy for him to get well so she can see him." ”

“ I was young, vigorous, and of a venturesome spirit, and entered into every detail with a zest that captured the heart of the old sailor. My education helped him greatly, and new books and instruments were added to our store for use on the trip. The crew knew only that we were going on a three-years' cruise. They had no share in the profits, but were paid extra big wages in gold, and were expected to go to out-of-the-way places and further north than usual. ”

“ I am just back from a visit to old scenes, old chums and old memories of my interesting experience on the western fringe of Uncle Sam's great, gray blanket—the plains.
If some of these fellows who know more about writing than about running engines would only go out there for a year and keep their eyes and ears and brains open, and mouths shut, they could come home and write us some true stories that would make fiction-grinders exceedingly weary.
The frontier attracts strong characters, men with pioneer spirit, men who are willing to sacrifice something, in order to gain an end ”

“ Sometimes I am mean enough to think that the romance, the dramas, and the tragedies of the road don't impress them as being as interesting as those of the plains, the Indians, or the seas—people are so apt to see only the everyday side of life anyway, and to draw all their romance and heroics from books.
I helped make a hero once—no, I didn't [Pg 78] either; I helped make the golden setting after the rough diamond had shown its value.
Miles Diston pulled freight on our road a few years ago. He was of medium stature, dark complexion, but no beauty. ”

“ Oh, I forgot him, Jim—the 'Kid,' your cheery little cricket of a firesy, who thought Jim Wainright the only man on the road that could run an engine right. I remember he wouldn't take a job running switcher—said a man that didn't know that firing for Jim Wainright was a better job than running was crazy. What's become of him? Running, I suppose? ”

“ Men and women of intelligence do not parade their sorrows in the market-place; they bear them as best they can, and try to appear as others, but once the specter of the grim destroyer has crossed the threshold, his shadow forever remains, a dark reminder, like a prison-bar across the daylight of a cell. ”

“ STORIES OF THE RAILROAD
AN ENGINEER'S CHRISTMAS STORY
In the summer, fall, and early winter of 1863, I was tossing chips into an old Hinkley insider up in New England, for an engineer by the name of James Dillon. Dillon was considered as good a man as there was on the road: careful, yet fearless, kindhearted, yet impulsive, a man whose friends would fight for him and whose enemies hated him right royally. ”

“ He was a manly-looking fellow, well-educated enough, sober, and a steady-going, reliable engineer; you would never pick him out for a hero. Miles was young yet—not thirty—but, somehow or other, he had escaped matrimony: I guess he had never had time. He stayed on the farm at home until he was of age, and then went firing, so that when I first knew him he had barely got to his goal—the throttle.
A good many men, when they first get there, take great interest in their work for a few months—until experience gives them confidence ”

“ Then stay in the shops, and see that the work is done right. The inventor is not a practical man; help him if you can, for experience tells us that ten things fail because of bad design where one does because of bad manipulation. Come up into the drawing-room, and I will introduce you to the inventor.'
"Up under the skylight I met the designer of the new engine, a mild little fellow—but he don't figure in this story. ”

“ Hopkins's clock "My Lady of the Eyes" looks down at me from across the mystery of eternity. The eyes do not change as once they did, or has age dimmed my [Pg 150] sight and imagination? Long I look into their peaceful depths thinking of their story, and ask, "Dear Eyes, is it well with thee?"—and they seem to answer, "It is well." ”

“ And I am afraid I belonged to a class of ignorant, short-sighted, bull-headed engineers who didn't believe that a railroad had any right to buy anything but fifteen by twenty-two eight-wheelers—the smaller they were the more men they would want. ”

“ Enoch looked out of the little window for a long time, forgot his pipe, and at last wiped a tear out of his eye, saying, as much to himself as to us: "George Burrows made me first mate of the first ship he ever sailed. She was named for his mother, and we left her in the ice away up about the seventy-third parallel. He was made of the salt of the earth—a sailor and a nobleman. ”

“ I didn't let go of that valve, I couldn't—I'd go to hell with it in my hand and let them do their worst.
"Then remorse took possession of me. Wasn't it enough to maim and disfigure poor Tamplin, why cook him to death—I'd shut off that cock. I fought with it, but it wouldn't close, and I called Dennis to help me.
"Some one stood behind me and put a cool hand on my brow, and a woman's voice said, 'Poor brave fellow, he's still thinking of his duty; all the heroes don't live in books.'
"I opened my eyes, and looked around. I was in St. Mary's Hospital, and a nun was talking to herself. ”

“ If you attributed their existence to man's passions, inhumanity or cruelty, or woman's weakness, he checked you at once.
"Every woman that becomes a crooked woman does so from choice; she needn't to if she didn't want to. The way to stop prostitution is for every honest man and woman to refuse to have anything to do with them in any way, or with those who do recognize them. 'Tain't right."
In this matter 'Lige Clark had no sympathy nor charity. ”

“ Well, course I saw her home, and tried my best to be interesting, but if a fellow ever in his natural life becomes a double-barreled jackass, it's just immediately after he falls in love. Why, he ain't as interesting as the unlettered side of an ore-sack. ”

“ Captain Burrows and I both looked over our heads, and there saw an impressive sight, indeed. A vast colored map of an unknown world hung in the clouds over us—a mirage [Pg 290] from the aurora. It looked very near, and was so distinct that we could distinguish polar bears on the ice-crags. One man insisted that the mainmast almost touched one snowy peak, and most of them actually believed that it was an inverted part of some world, slowly coming down to crush us. Captain Burrows looked for several minutes before he spoke. ”