Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1877-01-06
Uontiuned from first Pare. |

TContiuued from first page.l
everything that can happen between the
underside of the rails and the top of the
smokestack."
"But you haven't been in the ash-box p
laughed the company, little derisively.
mot exactly" replied the old man,
very gravely. "but under it, and partly,
too, very near in il. But i tell you, I've
been by when a splendid train of magnifi-
cent cars. full of people in high spirits,
with one jolt-before you could lift your
hand to your pipe or light match--was
nothing but heap of kindling-wood and
broken screws and pieces OF axes and
wheels, out of which came groans and
cries for help. while despairing men stood
round it wringing their hands; aud loco
motives, like kittens on a roof, leaping
down the bank. and rolled once, twice,
three times over and over, wheels up and
smoke-stack underneath, and all was
steam, fragments. fire, Kissing and shrieks;
but never in five and thirty years railroad
ing has my heart stood SO still as it did
under the ashbox."
Tell US about it, Uncle Zim, tell US ~
cried voices one could see were used to
making themselves heard above the clat-
ter, rattle and clank of the locomotive.
"Well, well I'll do it," he replied, as
he slowly undid his tobacco pouch and be-
gan to fill his short pipe, Though don't
like to go over the story. To this day
there's always something turns over under
the third rib here when think of it.
"You see, boys, the hands that worked
this punch in those days came near being
the hands of widow then, and my Carl
and Julia weren't born yet, though you
might even then have called me Stout
Franz"
"But what's that to do with it, uncle ?'
asked the circle.
well, then, in the d--'s name, light
mp your plagued elegant cigars again.
They suit you dolls in glass cases, as the
short pipe suits US stout fellows under the
free heavens. Pass the glasses this way
and then hold your jaw till get through.
ut was upon New Years eve, in the
year, lS45, thirty good years ago. and
devil OF storm, driving snow and sleet
mixed together. was a young fellow
I'd been married about year. You
know the station is horrible place for
service. Let storm come which way
it will, it always sweeps clean across the
square that's open and level as the top of
this table. In toward the town there is "a
little cut with two tracks, one or the other
of which always chokes up in the first
hour of a drifting snow. Just as you get
through the cut, in the third house in Gar
den street, behind the ol-mills that we
often cursed for a nuisance, because. we
always had to shut off steam going by
for fear OF the sparks from the chimney
catching in the shingle roof, lived with
my Louise and Franz. just born, who is
superintendent now over at Endrich's.
$50, on Sylvester-eve. 1916, | came in
to the station with a freight train from
Griesthal, after standing for fourteen hours
on the engine in storm at six below. |
was frozen stiff as an icicle, and glad
enough, you bet, to get hold of the Syl-
vester-punch. 1t was getting dusk al
ready as came in, and through the whirl
OF glistening flakes, saw the station with
its hundreds of lights, like huge Christ
mas box. A poor Christmas box for me
There were collected through the holt
days regular town of cars, something
like five hundred of them. and they d got
to be all made up so that everything
could be off directly after New Years
Hardly had l got off my engine in the
sngine-house when up comes the station
master, and says to me:
"'Hauser is taken sick, and you will
have to take No. ia his place
Ten thousand thunders = said I; but
hope it won't last till midnight, Mr.. Sta
ton master, for then | must be at home,
or there's i'll luck for the new year.
"'Fiddlesticks ? said he only you be
sure you're on hand, and away he was
gone in the driving snow.
IL thought I'd taken the matter
more TO heart than it was worth, and laid
the cold SILVER that crept over my skin
to the uncanny blast that came snorting
at me as l came out with the engine
The whole air was full of white snow,
and as the wreaths of it drove like while
ghosts across the engine, | could hardly
see the smoke-stack.
'Of the light-signals, one caught only
now aud then glimpse, red, white or
green; of the horn and pipe signals, what
with the bowling of the wind about the
cars and car-wbeels, and the singing in
the telegraph wires, and the rumbling OF
cars and the whistling of the engines. one
heard only enough to be sure one had not
understood them. OF the shouts of the
men one could make just nothing but that
they shouted.