The Somerset press. [volume] (Somerset, Ohio) 1873-1977, 1877-09-06
A Human Whirlpool.

Benjamin F. Taylor thus graphically
describes an everyday scene at the rail
road depot in Omaha on the departure of
the train for San Franisco:
The depot bubbles and boils like cal
dron. The engine comes changing down
with cloud and a rush. People climb
on and climb off the laden cars crazier
than ever. They are giving old ladies
lift from behind. They are Juggling up
carpet-bags, like cats with their last kit
tens. They are all colors with excitement
and hurry. 1t tstrikes you very queerly
that every body is going, and nobody is
staying. The demon of unrest is the
reigning king. "Long live the king!"
for life is motion. Still life is deaths
first cousin. A Babel of trunks is surg
ing toward the baggage-cars. Trucks are
piled like dromedaries. There's the Sar-
atoga that might be lived in if it only
had chimney, and the iron-bound chest
of the mistletoe-hough tragedy, and the
dapper satchel as sleek and black as wet
mink, and the little brindled hair trunk
with its brazen lettering of nail heads,
and the canvas sack as rusty as an ele-
phant. And so they tumble aboard with
an infinite jiggle of checks, an acrobatic,
jolly troupe, the hearts delight of the
trunk makers. You see your own prop
erty, bought new for the occasion, rolling
over and over corner-wise, like possessed
porpoise. Alas for any pigments or un-
guents or dilutions or perfumes thatmay
break loose in that somerset and make
colored maps of the five continents upon
your wedding vest or your snowy wrap
per. Last the leather purses of the United
States Mail fly from the red wagons like
chaff from tanning mill. The engines
steam and impatience are blown off in
whistle together. 1t spits spitefully on
one side and then the other, like a
schoolboy out of. the corners of his
mouth.
And amid the whirl of the malstrom
for if Norway has none, at least Omaha
has one-there are only two things that
are quiet and serene. The one is a
youthful descendant of Ham, with heel
like the head of a clawhammer-fve
claws instead of pair-lying on truck
upon stomach that, like an angleworm's,
pervades the whole physical man, and
the descendant turned up at both ends,
like rampant mud-turtle, his mouth
full of ivory and his eyes round with
content.
The other is " the last man"-not Mont
gomery's, but an earlier preduct-that
man in gray, in silk cap, and taking
lazy whiffs at cigar that has about
crumbled to ashes. He is as calm as the
Sphinx, but not quite so grand nor so
grim. He is going to San Franisco when
the train goes, and he patiently bides
his time. He is an old traveller, and
watches with an amused eye the human
vortex. He has seen it before at Gibral-
tar, at Canton, and now at Omaha.
At last the conductor gives the word
"All aboard" signals with wave of
his hand the engineer who has been lean
ing like Lots wife with his head over his
shoulder, the bell lurches from side to
side with clang, your last man gives his
cigar careless toss and swings himself
upon the rear platform, and the train.
with it's black banners and white flung
aIoft pulls out, and we are off for the
plains and desserts, and the gorges and
the mountains, and the Golden Gate
and the Western sea. Goodbye for a
while to the rivers that flow toward
sunrise. For once, we give " the Star
of Empire" that has been taking its
westward way for these half dozen gen.
erations stern chase, for according to
the saying of the blue roundabouts,
"a stern chase is long chase"