Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1886-04-23
TIE ENGINEERS S,rOR7.
BY SUSAN COOLIDGE,


a long, gradual grade. You're atop o!
the Rocky mountains now, ma'am."
Emily Vaughn looked to the left and
to the right, and was conscious of fe l.
ing Of disappointment. She had pictured
the top of the Rocky mountains as some
thing quite different from this Here
were no frowning heights or sudden gulrs,
only wide rolling plat al, some distant
peaks which did lot look very high, and
far ahead a glimpse of lower levels run
ming down into plains. 1t seemed hardly
worth while to have come so far for SO
little.
"Really!" she said. 'But where arc
the mountains? They don't look nearly
50 high as they did Yesterday"
Naturally, ma'am," responded the
engineer; "things don't appear so high
when you're as high as they are. We're
atop, you know"
"But there's no look-off, no wonderful
distance, as from the top of Mount
Washington. l confess L am disap-
pointed
Ifs kind of queer" said John Scott,
with dry chuckic, chow folks from the
East keep alluding to that ere little hill
as if it were the standard of measure,
ment. We don't think so much of it this
way. Why, ma'am, you're about two
thousand feet higher at this minute than
if you was at the top Of that little shuck
Of Mount Washington that they all
think so much Of"
Miss Vaughn smiled, but she expert
enccd shock nevertheless. The New
England mind does not easily accustom
itself to hearing its sacred mountain thus
lightly spoken against.
'Have you ever seen Mount Washing
ton?" she asked.
ooh, bless You, yes" replied John
Scott, cheerfully. Il was raised over to
Fryeburg, and grew up alongside of it.
L thought it was a pretty big concern
when | was boy, but now" lie closed
the sentence with a short, expires i've
laugh,
Miss Vaughn changed the subject. She
was not offended. She had grown to
like this rough, good-natured engineer
in the course OF the three days Journey,
during which, favored as a relative OF
one OF the directors of the road, she had
several times been privileged to ride, n
now, in tlc engineers cab for better
view of the country.
Have You been long on this road ~
she asked.
"Pretty near ever since it opened.
run the third through train that come
out from Chicago, and haven't been of
the line since, winter or summer, except
three months when I was laid up with a
broken leg"
"This must look very differently in
winter" said Miss Vaughn, noting the
treclcss distances, and the snow st.ll
giittcrihg on the higher peaks to the left.
"You may believe it does That first
year, wien the snow-sheds wasn't built,
it was terrible. l was running that ira n
that stuck in the snow seven days-per-
haps you'll remember about it; it was in
all the pap rs. | sha'n't ever forget that
not if | live to be as old as my grand
falher, and he didn't die till he was
ninety odd"
"Tell me about it, " said Miss Vaughn,
pcrsuasively, seating herself on the high
side bench Of the cab, with that air OF
attention which is 50 enticing to the
story-teller; amusements are few and far
between in the long monotony of thc
overland journey to California: beside
which, Miss Vaughn dearly loved a
story.
"Thero amt much to tell, " said John
Scott, with som m3thing of the feeling
which prompts the young vocalist to
complain of hoarseness II amt any
hand at telling things, either" Then,
won by Miss Vaughn's appealing eyes, Ii,
continued:
"We ran all fair and on time till We
was about two hundred miles beyond
Omaha. Then the snow began 1t didn't
seem mach at first. The womcn-folk in
the train rather liked it. They all crowded
to the windows to see, and the children
hurrahed. Anything seemed a pleasant
change after the age-brush, | suppore.
But as it wcat on coming, and the drifts
grew deep, and the cars had to run slow,
the older ones began t. look serious, and
! can tell you that we who had the charge
of the tram felt so.
"We was just between two of the feed
ing stations, and we put on all the steam
we could, hoping to push thro gl t1
where provisions could be got at in case
we had to stop. But it want no use.
The snow kept coming l never see il
come So The flakes looked as big as
saucers, and it drifts piled so quick that,
when we finally stuck, in about ten min
utes no one could see out of the win
dows, The train would have been clear
buried over if the brakemcn and the por-
ters hadn't gone the whole length over
the roofs every half-hour, and swept it of
with brooms and shovels. We had lot
of shoves aboard by good luck, or else
nothing could have saved us from being
banked up outright. But it was terrible
hard work, | can tell you. There want
no more laughing among the passengers
by the time it come to that, and the chill
dren stopped hurrahing."
ooh, the poor little things! What did
they do9 Were there many on board
Was there plenty for them to eatl"
"That was tle worst of it. There
wasn't plenty for any one to eat. We
had stuck just midway of the feeding
stations, and there wasn't great deal OF
anything on board beside what the
passengers had in their lunch baskets.
One lady she had can of condensed
milk, and they mixed that up for the
babies there was ten OF 'em-and so
they got on pretty well. But there was
about five other chld el, not babies, but