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.