LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2475, 14 March 1882, Page 4

LITERATURE.

THE ENGINEER'S STORY.

Mayhap, stranger, you hev ran over the Pennsylvany Central Railroad. As you may aoy, I was born and brought up on that line, first as fireman, then engineer nigh on to twenty yeara. It'a oilers excitin' to run a machine, and wen I waa a fireman I uaed to think it was better to be top of one of them splendid engines than to be President of the United States. Tbe day thf y first put me on the footboard and I took the lever in my hand and knew it was my engine, I reokon I was tbe proudest man between Fittaburg and Altoona. I kinder thought that everybody was going' to be out thet day, to see how the train mado her run, and you kin bet all your specie that she went smack np to the miult, the whole 117 miles. But this kind of spirit wore off, after a while, 'n I settled down into a sober steady goin' man; *n they did say thas I wer as safe 'n reliable a manaa they hed in the buaiceas. I hev to say it, stranger, aa there's nobody else to do it t olaewise you wouldn't know it. I waa turned 23 wen me and Mary waa married. Twenty eight yeara ago! You hev a wife, stranger P Hevn't got no wife I Well I mayhapa it's just as well! I hed Mary some eight yeara, but it don't aeem like no time, now. I left her tbere in the old Eeyatone State, her an' the boy. Sometimes I think I'd like to go back agio, and see the place where they both lie but I suppose I never shall. Don't aeem as if I had the heart to do it. It wasn't in any churchyard, you know ; but a little way up the mountain there waa a green quiet, spot among the tree?, and they are there—not more 'n 100 feet, say, above the track I —and I often wonder if Charley doesn't ■fill dream, when the New York express thundera by, that his old father is holding the throttle.

I put up a snug cabin by the aide of the road, where I had a small olearin', and between whiles T used to plant my potatoes and things, enough to keep us going, and Mary had her garden. Mary allers took to flowers, as I used to toll her, jokin' like, 'cos ahe was one of the family. Then we had a cow, and Mary raised chickens, and I never see no person could do as much with ohickens as Mary could, Jest seemed Uke those hens were alters strainln' of thelrselves laying eggs. You never see nothin' pay stricter attention to business than what they did. Never standin' about and foolln' around, but allers at it. And then they'd set an batch incredible. Mostly two broods a year, and brought 'em all up. Mary raieed the cow. One of the neighbours gave it to her when it was a oalf, and ahe made much of it. I used to tie it to a stake near the cabin when it was a little thing, for it to eat grass. Mary didn't know muoh about things then, she was young like, and one day she thought she'd put the calf In the stable. I told her she'd better not try it—she just a slight girl. Now a oalf, you know, is the moat decoivln* animal in the world. It don't look as if it had any strength, and yet it'll upset a fall-grown man. So Mary unties the rope and starts for the shed, and the oalf kloked up its heels and away it went. Mary held on the rope and away she went—thrown down, roferl over—and there was a confusion of calf and caliooe all over the piano. There wasn't no bones broken, but Mary was the most amazed girl you ever saw. That oalf

grew up to be a knowln* cow. She. need to run out on the fraok just on purpose to frighten people. She'd otay on till the train was oloae up, but never got hit. The men noon all got to know her and didn't mind her. But whenever a new engineer came nlong and saw her ho'd whistle brakes and rsiee a rumpus, often bringing the train to a dead atop. But she'd walk off just at the right time, and seemed to understand the joke. Our little cabin wab in among the mountains, a good ways from any other house, and I used to sometimes think that Mary must be lonely, with me away so much of the time. Yon see, I was altera out three nights in the week. I went up in the daytime, passing my house at noon, and down again that night, passing at midnight. But I was home two or three days in the week and allers Funday. The place where we lived was a wild region of country, and the storms we used to have up there, so high in the air, was fearf al.

I didn't tell you anything about the boy ? No ! Well, do you know I took to him the very first moment. And that's a very carious thing about babies. Now I never fancied 'em much, but I te'.l yon, stranger, it makes all the difference in the world whether it's yourbiby, or whether it belongs to somebody else. I've aeau a great many of 'em in my time, and accordin' to their parents they was the most uncommon babies ; but I could never see muoh of it. I used to laugh a good deal when people made suoh fools of themselves over their children, but I know exactly how it is now, for I suppose I was the greatest fool over my Charley as ever lived. Mary named him Charley. That was after me. Seems to me that boy took to a looomotive from tho time he was six months old. His mother would sit out in front of the house, with him in her lap, when I was up at noon, and she'd kiss her hand and wave the baby at me. By the time he was three years old he'd got so that I used to take him up to ride with me There was a water tank near the bouse, and when I stopped to water he was allers there, and I'd ketch him up 'n oarry 'im eff ten or twenty miles, till I met another triin, and some of the boys 'd carry him back home. 'Twasn't long afore there was scarce a man on the road as didn't know Charley Latham's baby. They's pick 'im up wherever they could find him, and sometimes he'd be gone nearly all day, but somebody 'd set him down afcre night, 'n he'd come toddlin' home. Some'imeß I think it's queer how tho men used to take to that baby. There was fellers just as rough as bears—brakes men; they'd get drunk and orazy with liqnor, and out or shoot a man quicker 'n lightnin'; 'a section men—up in them mountains them section men were mighty hard cases. What for fikhtiu* and quarrellia' they'd beat Sam Hill. An' yir, thera wasn't one o' them chaps as would speak a on ss word to my baby, They was all fond of 'im, and if anybody took to imposln' on 'im, why. there'd be a mus quloker'n the drop of yer hat. There was Bill Walker. "Vou didn't know Bill Walker, did you? No! Of course you didn't. Dead now Let a switch open on 'lm and he run cff. Never spoke after they picked 'im up. BUI, he was a crusty old bachelor —one of them fellers what never ses nothin' If he can help hisself. He didn't have no relations, and he was si sot agin everybody the boys used to say they didn't believe he ever had a father or mother like other folks. He'd hard lines in his life, for a fact, and it made him what they call a mlsen—. Yes, that's it—a mlsenthorp. He seemed to have a particular grudge for everybody he had seen, and a sorter general disgust for everybody he hadn't. Bill picked up tho baby for a ride ore day, and when he stopped at the next station he was goln' 'round cilin' his engine and the little tyke taggin' after, holdin' on to his coat tail and getting hisself all covered with oil and grease, jest like a reg'lar engineer; and there was one of the station men as didn't like Bill, nohow, and he ees se3 he : ' Hullo, Bill! is that a lefthander of your'n ?' They say Bill jußt turned ashy. He sets down his can and reached for that fellar—jest one, square in the juggler, and he didn't get out o' bed for ten days. On* day there came down from New York a rocking horse, and Mary found it at the water-tank with a pleoe of paper tied to the brid'e, *n it said like this: 'lf Bill Walker could ever wish for a baby of his own it would be little Charley ?' Ihat rockinghorse oost Bill a whole month's wages. One of the first things Charley learnt to say when he wab beginnin' to talk, was this :

You see the men on the road used to call one another ' Pard ' —short for ' pardner.' Charley he oaught is, and he always called me ' Pard.' I don't think he ever called me father or papa, like other children do ; but it was alius ' Paid.'

4 You and me is parda, isn't we ?' he need to a ay. An* that's what we alius called one another, and he went by the name of ' Charley Leatham's pard' all over the road. 1 I'd be goin' by the house on the noon train, and Itanin* out o' the oab watohln' for 'im 'n he'd be out in front, with a white rag or something to wave at me, and I'd see by the motion of his lips I couldn't hear for the noise of the oars—that he was aayln',— ' STou and me is parda, isn't we ? ' As I was teliln', Sundays I laid off; 'n in the mornin', after breakfast, Mary would All up a basket with some bread 'n butter 'n meat 'n things, and we three would no off into the mountains and stay all day. We uaed to do this every Sunday, and so Charley got to callin' it his pard's day. You see, he got a notion that it was the best day in the week, 'cos I was alius home with him. I didn't never go to church —it was a long ways ; and then I thought Charley would get as much religion by going around in the woods and among the moan'ains, where the trees and leaves were so beautiful and the rooks so grand, aa any other way. If thay don't tell us that the Creator who made 'em all is powerful and good, too, there ain't no preacher can do it. Yon went up to the top of Plke'a Peak the other day. I've been there too, 'n I'd like to koow if a chap oan go up there among those awfnl precipices and gorgea and lcok over the country for 100 miles and see the mountains around, and the plains 'way off in front that don't seem to have no end, and then look at hisßelf and say whether he does really amount to a row of pins. You see, I never was any Christian, and never give Charley no such traioln', and aometimea I think maybe I didn't do quite right by him. But, Lord love you, stranger, wen he went among the angels, I'm jeßt certain there waan't none of 'em had any cleaner soul 'an what he had. There waa a place about three-quarters of a mile from our place, where we used to go a good deal Sundays, and Mary would read the Bible to us and ting. She was a good singer, Mary was. "We used to call the place 'Devil's Run.' It was a sort of a oreek, but didn't have no water in it, 'oept after a hard rain. It came down bet wc en two high mountains, where it was aa steep as could be. Wen a storm came up I've known it in half an hour to have six feet of water in it. An' then it would faring down big trunks of trees and great stones, roaring that way you oould hear it for miles, It's got it's name because it was auch an infernal place. Often I've been woke up at night by a heavy shower, and I'd hear Devil's hun howling as tho;gh it would tear everything to pieces. There couldn't be no worae place fixed for the road, if they had hunted the whole conntry throagh, than right there. There was a sharp curve, and on the outside of it was a stralght-up anddown precipice for hundreds of feet, so that , if a train went eff it would be smashed into klndlin' wood and tenpenDy Dails. Devll'a Bun went underneath the track near the point of the curve, through a barrel culvert, and once there came on a hard atone, 'n the trees 'n the atones, and so on, choked up the oulvert, whioh waan't large enough, 'n the water dammed np aud rose, till by'-n----bye the whole embankment gave way, and twenty feet of the road went ripplln' down the mountain. They found out the break before any aocldent happened, and the culvert was rebuilt a good deal larger than before. But that place the whole road was afeared of.

As I was a tellin', if it hadn't been such a wicked place Devil's Run was the prettiest one on the whole mountain. The bed of the stream waa deep down, 'n full of ferns and grasses that Mary was allers gatherln', and we could set there In tho hottest day 'n the ann oould never find its way through the trees overhead.

(To be continued)