event. This produced much consternation
and confusion among the horses, as all farmers were there with
their families in carriages or wagons.

I recall one team of young horses which were driven to frenzy;
their owner was unable to control them, but he kept them on the
road while they ran away with a wild dash over the hills. In
telling this story, as illustrating how recent is railway development
in the United States, at a dinner abroad, I stated that as far
as I knew and believed, those horses were so frightened that
they could not be stopped and were still running. A very successful
and serious-minded captain of industry among the guests sternly
rebuked me by saying: "Sir, that is impossible; horses were never
born that could run for twenty-five years without stopping."
American exaggeration was not so well known among our friends on
the other side then as it is now.

As we boys of the village were gathered on the banks of the Hudson
cheering our favorite steamers, or watching with eager interest
the movements of the trains, a frequent discussion would be about
our ambitions in life. Every young fellow would state a dream
which he hoped but never expected to be realized. I was charged
by my companions with having the greatest imagination and with
painting more pictures in the skies than any of them. This was
because I stated that in politics, for I was a great admirer of
William H. Seward, then senator from New York, I expected to be
a United States senator, and in business, because then the largest
figure in the business world was Commodore Vanderbilt, I hoped
to become president of the Hudson River Railroad. It is one of
the strangest incidents of what seemed the wild imaginings of a
village boy that in the course of long years both these expectations
were realized.

When I entered the service of the railroad on the first of January,
1866, the Vanderbilt system consisted of the Hudson River and
Harlem Railroads, the Harlem ending at Chatham, 128 miles, and
the Hudson River at Albany, 140 miles long. The Vanderbilt system
now covers 20,000 miles. The total railway mileage of the whole
United States at that time was 36,000, and now it is 261,000 miles.

My connection with the New York Central Railroad covers practically
the whole period of railway construction, expansion, and development
in the United States. It is a singular evidence of the rapidity
of our country's growth and of the way which that