hat went on it; things
I certainly have never learned in all my life, having other matters on my
mind. He'd take a piece of silk ribbon and embroider a woman's initials
on it in no time at all, leaving her dead set to have this household
treasure.

But Ed had tired of sewing machines, like he had of hypnotism and the
double-headed Berkshire; and he never kept at anything a minute after it
quit exciting him. Ben come down to Red Gap to see his cousin and they
had quite a confab about what Ed should next take up for his life work.
Ben said it was railroading for his, and some day he'd be a general
manager, riding round in his private car and giving orders right and
left, though nothing but a humble brakeman now, and finally he talked Ed
into the same exalted ambitions. Ed said he had often wanted to ride in a
private car himself, and if it didn't take too long from the time you
started in he might give railroading a chance to show what it could do
for him. Ben said all right, come over with him and he'd get him started
as brakeman, with a fine chance to work up to the top.

So, after infesting a few more houses with the Home Queen, Ed went
into his new profession. He told me, the last thing, that, even if he
didn't stick till he got to the top, it was, anyway, a fine chance for
adventure, which was really the thing he had come west of Chicago for.
He said night and day he pined for adventure.

He got his adventure right soon after the company's pay roll was adorned
with his name. He'd been twisting up brakes on freight cars for ten days
till the life looked tame to him, even with a private car at the end,
and then all his wildest dreams of adventure was glutted in something
like four minutes and thirty seconds. On this eleventh day after he'd
begun at the bottom he started to let two big freight cars loaded with
concentrates down the spur track, from one of the mines at Burke, having
orders to put 'em where the regular train for Wallace could pick 'em up.
Burke is seven miles up the canon from Wallace and the grade drops two
hundred and thirty-five feet to the mile, being a masterpiece of
engineering. Ed gets his two cars to the main line, all right, whistling
a careless ditty. Then when they should of stopped they did not. They
kept sneaking and creaking along on him. He couldn't get the brake of
the forward car up very tight, and in setting the brake of the rear car,
with a brakeman's stick for a lever, he broke the c