Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1883-11-01
An Emigrant Train.

A night in Western emigrant train
is thus described by r. l.. Stevenson,
in Lon9nldn' Magazine:
had been suffering in my health
good deal all the way; and ut last
whether | was exhausted bv my COM
plant or poisoned in some wavside eat
ing-house, the evening we left Laramie.
l fell sick outright. That was night
which | shall not readily forget. The
lamps did not 90 out; each made
faint shining in its own neighborhood,
and the shadows were COMPOUNDED to-
gether in the long hollow box of the car.
The sleeperS lay in uneasy attitudes;
here two chums alongside, flat 1pcn
their backs like dead folk; there a man
sprawling on the floor. with his face
upon his arm; there another halt
seated with his head and shoulders on
the bench. The most passive were
continually and roughly shaken by
the movement of the train: others
stirred. tIrned or stretched out their
arms like children; it was surprising
how many groaned and murmured in
their sleep; and rs passed to and fro,
stepping across the PROSTATE, and
caught now SnOre now q gasp now
half-formed word. it gave me meas
ure of the worthleSsneSS of rest in that
unreStin@ vehicle. Although it. was
chill, was obliged to open my win
dow; for the degradation of the air
soon became intOlerable to one who
was awake and using the full supply OF
life. Outside in 4 glimmering night,
saw the black. amorphouS hills shoot by
unweariedly into our wake. They that
long for morning have never longed for
it more earnestly than l, and vet
when day came, it was to shine upon the
same broken and unsightly quarter of
the world. Mile upon mile. and not
tree, a bird or river. Only down the
long. sterile canyons, the train shot
hooting, and awOke the resting echo.
That train was the one piece of life
in all the deadly land; it was
the one actor the one spectacle fit to
to be observed in this paralysis of man
and nature. And when | think how
the railroad has been pushed through
this unwatered wilderness and haunt
OF savage tribes, and now will bear an
emigrant for some 912 from the
Atlantic to the Golden Gate; how at
each stage OF the construction, roar
INC lmprOmptu cities. full of cold and
lust and death, sprang up and then died
away again, and are now but wavside
stations in the desert; how in these I'M
couth places pigtailed Chinese pirates
worked side by side with border ruflians
and broken men from Europe, talking
together in mixed dialect, mostly
oaths. gambling, drinking, quarreling
and numbering like wolves; how the
plumed hereditary lord of all America
heard, in this last fastness, the scream
OF the bad medicine wagon" chariot
inc his foes; and then, when | 90 on to
remember that ali this epical turmoil
was conducted by gentlemen in frock
coats, and with Il view 10 nothing more
extraordinary than Il fortune and a sub
sequent visit to Paris, it seems to me |
own, as if this railway were the one
typical achievement of the age in which
we live, as fit brought together, into
one plot, all the ends of the world and
all the degrees of social rank, and offer
dto some great writer the busiest, the
most extended and the most varied sub
ject for an enduring literary work. If
it be romance, if it be contrast, if it be
heroism that we require, what was Troy
town to this.