onary. Even a poem--which is supposed to prove anything with a
little of nothing--could hardly be found to prove it; but in this
beginning hour of the twentieth century there are not a few of us--for
the time at least allowed to exist upon the earth--who are obliged to
say (with Luther), "Though every tile on the roundhouse be a devil, we
cannot say otherwise--the locomotive is beautiful."

As seen when one is looking at it as it is, and is not merely using
it.

As seen from a meadow.

We had never thought to fall so low as this, or that the time would
come when we would feel moved--all but compelled, in fact--to betray
to a cold and discriminating world our poor, pitiful, one-adjective
state.

We do not know why a locomotive is beautiful. We are perfectly aware
that it ought not to be. We have all but been ashamed of it for being
beautiful--and of ourselves. We have attempted all possible words upon
it--the most complimentary and worthy ones we know--words with the
finer resonance in them, and the air of discrimination the soul loves.
We cannot but say that several of these words from time to time have
seemed almost satisfactory to our ears. They seem satisfactory also
for general use in talking with people, and for introducing
locomotives in conversation; but the next time we see a locomotive
coming down the track, there is no help for us. We quail before the
headlight of it. The thunder of its voice is as the voice of the
hurrying people. Our little row of adjectives is vanished. All
adjectives are vanished. They are as one.

Unless the word "beautiful" is big enough to make room for a glorious,
imperious, world-possessing, world-commanding beauty like this, we are
no longer its disciples. It is become a play word. It lags behind
truth. Let it be shut in with its rim of hills--the word
beautiful--its show of sunsets and its bouquets and its doilies and
its songs of birds. We are seekers for a new word. It is the first
hour of the twentieth century. If the hill be beautiful, so is the
locomotive that conquers a hill. So is the telephone, piercing a
thousand sunsets north to south, with the sound of a voice. The night
is not more beautiful, hanging its shadow over the city, than the
electric spark pushing the night one side, that the city may behold
itself; and the hour is at hand--is even now upon us--when not the sun
itself shall be more beautiful to men than the telegraph stopping the
sun in the midst of its