retching far behind and rising higher and higher, going to
heaven while the cars are going to Boston, conceals the sun for a minute
and casts my distant field into the shade, a celestial train beside
which the petty train of cars which hugs the earth is but the barb
of the spear. The stabler of the iron horse was up early this winter
morning by the light of the stars amid the mountains, to fodder and
harness his steed. Fire, too, was awakened thus early to put the vital
heat in him and get him off. If the enterprise were as innocent as it is
early! If the snow lies deep, they strap on his snowshoes, and, with the
giant plow, plow a furrow from the mountains to the seaboard, in which
the cars, like a following drill-barrow, sprinkle all the restless men
and floating merchandise in the country for seed. All day the fire-steed
flies over the country, stopping only that his master may rest, and I am
awakened by his tramp and defiant snort at midnight, when in some remote
glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased in ice and snow; and he
will reach his stall only with the morning star, to start once more on
his travels without rest or slumber. Or perchance, at evening, I hear
him in his stable blowing off the superfluous energy of the day, that he
may calm his nerves and cool his liver and brain for a few hours of
iron slumber. If the enterprise were as heroic and commanding as it is
protracted and unwearied!

Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of towns, where once only
the hunter penetrated by day, in the darkest night dart these bright
saloons without the knowledge of their inhabitants; this moment stopping
at some brilliant station-house in town or city, where a social crowd
is gathered, the next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The
startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village
day. They go and come with such regularity and precision, and their
whistle can be heard so far, that the farmers set their clocks by them,
and thus one well-conducted institution regulates a whole country.
Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was
invented? Do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did
in the stage-office? There is something electrifying in the atmosphere
of the former place. I have been astonished at the miracles it has
wrought; that some of my neighbors, who, I should have prophesied, once
for all, would never get to Boston by so promp