The St. Johns herald., 1896-04-25

chored in what people who live there
 call the Queen City of the Hudson. The
 other end is at present located in corn
 field in the direction of Boston. Every
 time Mir. Sage gets out of sorts with the
 Vanderbilts or annoyed at the New York
 and New Haven people he stretches out
 his Poughkeepsie and Eastern little
 and employs several men with pickaxes.
 Then his surveyors squint due east
 through theodolites and there is big talk
 about the Poughkeepsie and Eastern
 paral1eling the Boston and Albany.
 Threats are also made of an extension
 west to Chicago.
 Mir. Sage decided recently to take an
 active part in the operating of his pet road. This determination was due to
 information he received privately that
 things were not going on all right. The
 locomotive engineers were exceeding their allowance of three-quarters of a pound of coal per train mile, and were running freight trains over the whole
 length of the road in less than two days, the schedule time, or taking a week,
 just as caprice dictated. Then other ir- regularities were discovered. At the annual inventory, Jan. l, three coupling pins and one chamois leather washrag were missing. g
 "The whole root of the difficulty is laziness," said President Sage. "These things will always happen to a railroad whose employees are not industrious. Discharge all the lazy men we have at present and get more. '"
 But this was more easily said than done. They couldn't locate the lazy men. A freight crew would set out from Boston Corners with every appearance of wakefulness and energy, but just as soon as 1t got around curve where the master car builder or the division su- perintendent couldn't see it, the engi- neer would run it on siding and the crew would go to sleep or fall to pick ing blackberries. MT. Sage at one time even thought of stringing wires along the track, so that he might learn where his trains were, but this involved a large outlay, and he racked his brain for some simpler plan.
 He at length evolved Q scheme by which the division superintendent. the master car builder and the track fore man should hide in a caboose and keep tabs on sample train. But he found out that the division superintendent, the master car builder and the track foreman, who was one and the same person, had to attend to the turntable at Boston Corners and couldn t leave his worE. The trains were getting slower and slower. The Cannon Ball express, which was put on as a menace to the New Haven company, occupied nine hours in running over the road. Then President Sage took counsel with him. self and decided that something must be done.
 He consulted firm of detectives. He told them that he had ballasted and bonded the road in a style that brought it up to date, and he wanted them to find out how the employees spent their time. and why an up to date roadbed did not bring up to date speed. They gave him every assurance that they would bring the men to time.
 Equipped with camera, a detective who makes speciality of railroad work went to Poughkeepsie. He knew that the presence of a passenger on Pougb- keepsie and Eastern train would excite so he disguised himself as a tramp by marvelously small number of artistic touches, and began to loiter along the grass grown line of the road.
 The result of his labors, it is said, is an immense collection of cabinet photo graphs. They were taken by the instan- taneous process, but they might just as easily have been done with time ex- posture, for they show that employees of the Poughkeepsie and Eastern rarely move. Some of the pictures are so real istic that one who sees them can almost hear the conductors and brakemen snore.
 One especially good view represents the Lightning Bug" freight train, which brings maple sirup down from Vermont regularl ly every day. standing at ease on the track while her crew, round log fire, are listening to the fireman, who is reading dime novel. There are cobwebs on the driv- ing wheel of the locomotive.
 An interesting physiological fact brought out by the detective is that em- ployees of the Poughkeepsie and Eastern have the rare faculty of sleeping while standing up. The pictures positively prove this. The open mouths and closed eyes eloquently describe condition of sound slumber. When this convincing evidence that insomnia was not one of l his maladies was shown to a brakeman, he said:
 "That's the way always act I keep | my eyes shut so as not to wear them out, and my mouth is one of those that | falls open all the time and only closes when I remember to shut it. That's | a habit learned since came to live in l Poughkeepsie. !"
 MT. Sage does not know exactly what | to do with his bundle of photographs. | There is some talk of his pasting them up in the Poughkeepsie station as a i to the employees in general. The men know all about the pictures and are very much alarmed.
 'They took me eating piece of pie," said freight handler, "when it wasn't | the dinner hour, and I should have been chucking pig iron on flat car. Then they've got picture of political de- bate in the roundhouse, when the men I Il !