Connecticut western news., 1899-11-30

gooa S<puIr, II couiu run yet. DuJ ue cause of it's make and size il would be the burlesque of all railroaders. Be
 tween that rude machine, crawling down the iron track, followed by clumsy and bouncing train, and one of our Rocky mountain locomotives, with a village of palace cars, becoming drawing rooms by day and princely dormitories by night, what bewitching progress!
 Modern Wonders.
 See the train move out of one of our great depots for thousand mile jour ney! All aboard! Tickets clipped and baggage checked and porters attentive to every want, under tunnels dripping with dampness that never saw the light; along lodges where an inch of the track would be the difference be- tween a hundred men living and hundred dead, full head of steam and two men in the locomotive charged with all the responsibility of whistle and Westinghouse brake. Clank! clank! go the wheels. Clank! clank! echo the rocks Small villages only hear the thunder and see the whirl- wind as the train shoots past, city on the wing Thrilling, startling, sublime, magnificent spectacle-a rail train in lightning procession.
 When years ago the railroad men struck for wages, our country was threatened with annihilation, and we realized what the railroad wheel had done for this country-over one hun dred and eighty thousand miles of rail- road in the United States; In one year over a billion dollars received from passengers and freight; White noun tains, Alleghany mountains, Rocky mountains, Sierra Nevadas, lowing to the iron yoke; all the rolling stock of New York Central, Erie, Pennsylvania, Michigan Central Georgia, Great Southern, Union Pacific and all the other wheels of the tens of thousands of freight cars, wrecking cars, ca- booses, drawing room cars, sleeping cars, passenger cars, of all the accom- modation, express and special trains, started by the wheel of the grotesque locomotive that I saw at Doncaster. For what it has done for all Christen- dom I ejaculate in the language of the text, 70 wheelp'
 While the world has been rolling on the eight wheels of the rail car or the four wheels of the carriage or the two wheels of the gig it was not until 1876, at the Centennial expoQtion at Phila- delphia, that the miracle of the nine teenth century rolled in-the bicycle. The world could not believe Its own eyes, and not until quite far on in the eighties were the continents enchanted with the whirling, flashing, dominat- ing spectacle of a machine that was to do so much for the pleasure, the busi- ness, the health and the profit of na- tions. The world had needed 1t for 5000 years. Mans slowness of loco motion was a mystery. Was 1t of more importance that the reindeer or the eagle rapidly exchanged jungles or crags than that man should get swift ly from place to place? Was the busi- ness of the bird or the roebuck more urgent than that of the incarnated i'm mortal? No. At last we have the obliteration of distances by pneumatic tire. At last we have wings. And what has this invention done for wo- man? The cynics and constitutional growlers would deny her this eman- cipation and say. What better exer- else, can she have than a broom or duster or a churn or rocking a cradle or running up and down stairs or a walk to church with a prayer book un- der her armw And they rather re- joice to find her disabled with broken pedal or punctured tire half way out to Chevy Chase or Coney Island. But all sensible people who know the tonic of fresh air and the health In deep respiration and the awakening of dis used muscles and the exhilaration of velocity will rejoice that wife and mother and daughter may have this new recreation. Indeed life to so many Is so hard a grind that I am glad at the arrival of any new mode of health full recreation. We need have no anx- iety about this invasion of the worlds stupidity by the vivacious and laugh ing and jubilant wheel, except that we always want 1t to roll in the right di- rection, toward place of business, to- ward good recreation, toward philan- thropy, toward usefulness, toward places of divine worship, and never to- ward immortality or Sabbath desecra- ton. My friend Will Carleton. the poet, said what like when be wrote: We claim great utility that daily must increase. We claim from inactivity a sensible release;
 A constant mental, physical and moral help we
 feel,
 That bids us turn enthusiasts and cry, God bless
 the wheel
 Never yet having mounted one of those rolling wonders, I stand by the wayside. far enough off to avoid be. ing run over, and in amazement and congratulation cry out, in Ezekiel's phraseology of the text, 70 whselp'
 Miraculous Printing Press.
 Fourthly, look into the literary world and see what the wheel has ac- complished. I am more astounded with this than anything that has pre- ceded. Behold the almost miraculous printing press! Do you not feel the ground shake with the machinery of the New York, Brooklyn. Boston, Phil adelphia, Washington and western dailies? Some of us remember when the hand ink roller was run over the cylinder, and by great haste 800 copies of the village newspaper were issued In one day and no lives lost. But in- yention has crowded invention and wheel jostled wheel, stereotyping. electrotyping, taking their places, Ben jamin Franklin's press giving way to the Lord Stanhope press, and the Washington press and the Victory press and the Hoe perfecting press have been set up. Together with the newspapers comes the publication of innumerable books of history, of poetry, of romance, of art. of travel. of biography, of religion, dictionaries, en- cyclopedias and Bibles. Some of these presses send forth the most accursed h,,f ho