The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1901-04-12
DUE TO A DREAM.
To What a Prominent Railroad MAN.
ager Attributes His Rise
in Business.

"One of the most successful railroad
men in the United States" said we'll
known local official, in the New Orleans
f, Times-Democrat, .'claims that he owes
his start in life to a dream. Several
different versions of the story have
| been current, but some years ago /
heard the facts from his own lips. He
entered the service originally as a
| wiper in roundhouse, then got fire.
mans billet and eventually became an
engineer, where he bid fair to stick in
| definitely. AS I remember his nara
tive, he had been holding down the job
| for two or three years, when he was
greatly disturbed one night by hide
Gus dream. He thought he was on his
engine, going at full speed over Sec
| tion of the road that was strange and,
| at the same time, familiar, after the
| fashion of things seen in Nightmares,
| when suddenly rounding a curve he
| caught sight of a man lying, face down,
across one of the rails. The man had
his head on his arms and was in the
! exact position of one who had fallen
| asleep, overcome by fatigue. The en-
gineer was transfixed with horror,
! and, before he could seize the reverse
lever, he felt the sickening scrunch
| of wheels passing over human body.
| The sound was still in his ears when he
awoke. Naturally enough the vision
preyed on his mind, and when it began
to repeat itself at intervals of two or
three nights. he soon became thor
oughly unnerved. The dream was al
1 ways precisely the same, and after sew
! eral weeks of mental torture he walked
| into the superintendent Office and
/ threw up his job. To have assigned the
real cause might have laid him open
| to suspicion of insanity, so he merely
| said he was<tired of place which
promised no promotion and let it go at
| that. The higher officials had already
| observed his superior intelligence, and
the reason he gave for his resignation
rather raised him in their opinion; SO
few months later, when they needed
yardmaster at an important point,
! they set regulations aside and gave
| him the place. From that he climbed
to train dispatcher, then assistant
| division superintendent, then traffic
agent, and so on up, until he is now
general manager of one of the best
lines in the north, at a salary of $751;
600 year. If he had stayed at the
throttle he might have risen in time,
but the chances are that he would have
missed the fioodtide of fortune. A sim
gular feature of the story is that his
old engine really did kill man about
! three weeks after he left it. The poor
fellow was lying on the track in good
deal the way the figure appeared in the
! dream. and it was never known wheth-
er he had been sandbagged or had
dropped there from exhaustion. In
looking up his history it was found
that he was an old tramp who had once
been man of means, and years before
was stakeholder in that very road.
! OF course that circumstance has no
particular bearing on the other facts,
but it adds to the general strangeness
of the case. In relating the story in my
presence, the general manager re-
marked that it was long time before
he ventured to tell anybody the true
reason why he had quit his engine.
| Dreamers are not especially popular
in practical business like railroad
ing"