TWO hours after midnight we were once more on the cars, bound for
Boston.[52]
“These long journeys,” said Irving, “are most distressing. I wonder
what sort of a trip this will be. We ought to arrive at Boston, on
Sunday, at about six, they say.”
“The agent of the road,” replied Mr. Palser, “tells me he hopes to
make good time. But I told him that the only occasion when we have
done a long journey on time has been when we had no railroad agent to
take care of us. They are very good fellows, and anxious to help us,
but they have been unfortunate. Our flat baggage car is a trouble. You
will remember that the Erie could not take it, and some of the other
companies consider it an extra risk. It affords an excuse for not
exceeding a certain speed. Besides this, we have not had so much snow
in America for over twenty years as this winter. Our trains have been
snowed up, and this has occasioned all sorts of delays, as you know.
But I hope we will get through to Boston in good time.”
We did not, “by a large majority,” as Bardwell Slote says. It was
a tedious and unsatisfactory journey. So soon as we left the West
Shore line we began to have trouble. It was on a short section of an
unimportant road that we encountered most delay, the character of which
will be best illustrated by a brief conversation between Irving and
several other persons:—
“Well, what is the matter now, George?” Irving asked the colored
conductor of the private car.
“Oh, this is the third time he’s stopped in the woods to tinker up his
darned old engine,” said George; “seems it needs it!”
Everybody laughed at this rough criticism of the engineer and his
locomotive.
“Stops in the woods, eh?” says Irving,—“that nobody may see him? But
suppose another train comes along?”
“If the brakeman should neglect to go back and flag it, there might be
no performance at the Boston Theatre on Monday,” said Palser. “That is
how Wagner, the car-builder, lost his life. He was killed in one of
his own cars, on the New York Central. The train stopped suddenly,—it
is said somebody on board pulled the check-string in joke,[53]—and an
oncoming train, not being warned, ran into them, and Mr. Wagner was
killed.”
“Ah,” Irving replied, “there must have been a good deal of
flag-signalling done on this journey of ours, seeing how often we have
stopped.”
“Yes, that’s so; yah, yah!” remarks the privileged colored servant.
“I don’t think any of the tracks we have crossed are as good as the
Pennsylvania,” said Irving; “they are certainly not as good as the
Midland or Great Western in England. The West Shore road is evidently
a fine one; but I have more than once during our travels been reminded
of a story I came across recently, relating to a passenger’s question:
‘We’ve struck a smoother strip of road, have we not?’ The Arkansas
railway conductor replied, ‘No, we’ve only run off the track.’”
“Yah! yah!” shouted George, as he disappeared to tell the story to
Peter in the kitchen.
“The newspaper that told the story added, as American journals are
apt to do, a line or two of its own, to the effect that the Arkansas
conductor’s reply was almost as uncomplimentary as that of an Eastern
conductor, who, upon being discharged, said, ‘Well, I was intending to
quit anyway, for there is nothing left of your old road but two streaks
of iron rust and a right of way.’”