The following incident appeared in a New York daily:
Bent with age but bright-eyed and alert, James Swift,
eighty-four years old, was committed at his own request to the
almshouse yesterday by Magistrate Krotel, sitting in Yorkville
Court.
“I’m goin’ to start for California just as soon as I come out
of the almshouse,” Swift told the magistrate. The old man
displayed a silver watch with copper chain, which, he said, was
a perpetual pass over the Union Pacific Railroad. It had been
given him as a token that he was one of the men engaged in the
construction of the road, the presentation being made on the
occasion of the driving of the last spike in May, 1866. All he
had to do, he said, when he wanted to ride over the road was to
show the timepiece to the conductor.
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