Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-11-27

| ties until the LuCanla or the Cunar0
line and the Majestic of the White
Star line and the New York of the
American line and the Kaiser Wilhelm
Of the North German Lloyd line cross
the Atlantic ocean in six days or less,
| communication between the two coun-
tries so rapid and so constant that
whereas once those who had been to
Europe took on airs for the rest of
their mortal lives-and to me for many
years the most disagreeable man I could
meet was the man who had been to
Europe, despising all American pic
lures and American music and Ameri-
can society because they had seen Eu-
ropean pictures and heard European
music and mingled in European So
ciety-now a transatlantic voyage is
SO common that a sensible man would
no more boast of it than if he had
been to New York or Boston.
Landmarks of Progress.
What a difference between John
Fitch's steamboat, 60 feet long, and the
Oceanic, 7O4 feet long! The ocean
wheel turns swifter and swifter, filling
I'D the distance between the hemis-
pheres and fastening the time spoken
of in the book Of Revelation when
there shall be no more sea.
While this has been doing on the
water James Watts wheel has done
as much on the land. How well re-
member Sanderson's stagecoach, run
ming from New Brunswick to EastOn,
as he drove through Somerville, N. j.,
turning up to the postoft1ce and drop
ping the mail bags with ten letters
and two or three newspapers, Sander
son himself on the box, 6 feet 2 inches
and we'll proportional, long lash whip
in his hand, the reins Of six horses in
the other, the leaders" lathered along
the line of the traces, foam dripping
from the bitsi
It was the event Of the day when
the stage came. It was our highest
ambition to become a stage driver.
Some Of the boys climbed on the great
leathern boot of the stage, and those
of US who could not get on shouted,
"Cut behind" I saw the old stage
driver not long ago, and expressed to
him my surprise that one around
whose head I had seen a halo of glory
in my boyhood time was only a man
like the rest of us. Between Sander
sons stagecoach and a Chicago express
train what a difference, all the great
cities of the nation strung on an iron
thread Of railways!
At Doncaster, England, I saw George
Stephenson's first locomotive. If in
good repair, it could run yet, but be-
cause of it's make and size it would be
the burlesque of all railrOaders. Be
tween that rude machine, crawling
down the iron track, followed by a
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 a thousand mile jour
new! 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 off
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!
clanki go the wheels. Clank! clank!
echo the rocks. Small villages only
hear the thunder and see the whirl-
wind as the train shoots past, a 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 humiliation, 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, Allegheny mountains, Rocky
mountains, Sierra Nevadas, bowling 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
bosses, drawing room cars, sleeping
cars, passenger cars, of all the accom-
mediation, 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 calculate in the language of the
text, so wheely'
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 exposition at Phila-
delphia, that the miracle of the nine
teenth century rolled in-the bicycle.
The world could not believe it's own
eyes, and not until quite far on in the
oiohtiaS were the continents ennha ntad