wait at a station some twenty miles further on,
provided a train coming in the opposite direction is not on the side
track before he gets there. The execution of this order involves a delay
of five or ten minutes, but when we have the line clear again such good
time is made that we accomplish our task and pull into the depot, where
locomotives are to be changed, on time to the second.

Such is a ride on a locomotive in broad daylight. At night of course the
dangers and risks are increased ten-fold. The head-light pierces into
the inky darkness, and frequently exaggerates the size of objects on and
near the track. The slightest misunderstanding, the most trivial
misinterpretation of an order, the least negligence on the part of any
one connected with or employed by the road, may involve a wreck, to the
total destruction of the train and its passengers, and the engineer
feels every moment the full extent of his responsibilities and the
nature of the risks he runs.

These responsibilities are increased ten-fold by the great speed
necessary in these days of haste and hurry. Few of our great-grandfathers
lived to see steam applied as a motive power for locomotion. Most of our
grandparents remember the first train being run in this country. Many of
those who read these lines can recollect when a philosopher placed
himself on record that a speed of twenty miles was impossible, because,
even if machinery could be constructed to stand the wear and tear, the
motion would be so rapid that the train men and passengers would succumb
to apoplexy or some other terrible and fatal malady.

It is less than seventy years ago since the time that the so-called
crank, George Stephenson, ventured modestly to assert that his little
four-and-a-half-ton locomotive, "The Rocket," was actually capable of
whirling along one to two light carriages at the astounding velocity of
twelve miles an hour. He was laughed to scorn by the highly intelligent
British Parliamentary Committee engaged in the investigation of his new
method of land traveling. At the present day, with regularly scheduled
trains on many lines thundering across wide continents tirelessly hour
after hour, at the rate of a mile a minute, it is the deliberate
judgment of the most conservative students of railway science that the
ultimate limit of speed is still in the far distance, and that 100 miles
per hour will not be deemed an extraordinary rate of travel by the time
the first deca