p his hat and coat.

"I'd like to hear Mr. Ackerman tell of the early steamboating," remarked
the lad. "I'll bet the story couldn't match the one you have just told."

"Perhaps not," his father replied. "Nevertheless the steamships had
their full share of exciting history and you must not be positive in
your opinion until you have heard both tales. Now come along, son, if
you are going with me, for I must be off."

Obediently Stephen slipped into his ulster and tagged at his father's
heels along the corridor.

What a magic country he lived in! And how had it happened that it had
been his luck to be born now rather than in the pioneer days when there
were not only no railroads but no great hotels like this one, and no
elevators?

"I suppose," observed Mr. Tolman, as they went along, "we can hardly
estimate what the coming of these railroads meant to the country. All
the isolated sections were now blended into one vast territory which
brought the dwellers of each into a common brotherhood. It was no small
matter to make a unit of a great republic like ours. The seafarer and
the woodsman; easterner, westerner, northerner, and southerner exchanged
visits and became more intelligently sympathetic. Rural districts were
opened up and made possible for habitation. The products of the seacoast
and the interior were interchanged. Crops could now be transported;
material for clothing distributed; and coal, steel, and iron--on which
our industries were dependent--carried wherever they were needed.
Commerce took a leap forward and with it national prosperity. From now
on we were no longer hampered in our inventions or industries and forced
to send to England for machinery. We could make our own engines,
manufacture our own rails, coal our own boilers. Distance was diminished
until it was no longer a barrier. Letters that it previously took days
and even weeks to get came in hours, and the cost and time for freight
transportation was revolutionized. In 1804, for example, it took four
days to get a letter from New York to Boston; and even as late as 1817
it cost a hundred dollars to move a ton of freight from Buffalo to New
York and took twenty days to do it. In every direction the railroads
made for national advancement and a more solid United States. No
soldiers, no statesmen of our land deserve greater honor as useful
citizens than do these men who braved every danger to build across the
country our trans-continental railways.