The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1903-10-10
WESTMINSTER, MD, SATURDAY, OCTOBER TO- 1903.
Seleet Stnrp.
THE STUFF THAT STANDS.

THE STUFF THAT STANDS.
1t was very late in the fifties, and Lin
coin and Douglas were engaged in animated
discussion of the burning questions of the
time, when Melvin Jewett journeyed to
Bloomington, Illinois, to learn telegraphy.
1t was then new, weird business, and
his father advised him not to fool with it..
His college chum said to him, as they
chatted together for the last time before
leaving school, that it would be gruesome-
ly lonely to sit in dimly lighted flag
station and have that inanimate machine
tick off its talk to him in the sable hush
of night, but Jewett was ambitious. Be-
ing earnest, brave and industrious, he
learned very rapidly, and in few months
found himself in charge of little wooden
way station as agent and operator, yard
master, and everything else. 1t was a
lonely spot, but there was no night work
When the shadows came and hung on the
bare walls of his office the spook pictures
that had been painted by his school chum,
the young operator went over to the little
tavern for the night.
True, Springdale, at that time, was not
much of a town, but the telegraph boy
had the satisfaction of feeling that he was,
by common consent, the biggest man in
the place.
Out in hay field, he could see from
his window, farmer gazing up at the
humming wire, and the farmer boy hold
ing his ear to the pole, trying to under
stand. All this business that so blinded
and bewildered with its mystery, not only
the farmer, but the village folk as well,
was to him as simple as sunshine
In little time he had learned to read
newspapers with one eye and keep the other
on the narrow window that looked out
along the line; to mark with one ear the
''down brakes signal of the north. bound
freight, clear in the siding, and with the
other to catch the whistle of the incoming
''cannon ball. faint and far away.
When Jewett had been at Springdale
some six or eight months, another young
man dropped from the local one morning,
and said ''vie geghts,' and handed him a
letter. The letter was from the superin-
tendent calling him back to Bloomington
to dispatch trains. Being the younger of
the dispatchers, he had to take the "death
trick" The day man used to work from
s o clock in the morning until 4 O clock in
the afternoon, the "split trick man from
1 until midnight, and the ''death trio"
man from midnight until morning.
We called it the ''death trick because
in the early days of railroading we had a
lot of wrecks about 4 O clock in the morn
ing. That was before double tracks and
safety inventions had made travelling by
rail safer than sleeping at home, and be-
fore trainmen, off duty, had learned to
look not on liquor that was red. Jewett,
however, was not long on the night shift.
He was good dispatcher, bit risky at
times, the chief thought, but that was
only when he knew his man He was a
rusher and ran trains close, but he was
ever watchful and wide awake.
In two years he had become chief dis
patcher. During those years, the coun-
try, so quiet when he first went to Bloom
ington, had been torn by the tumult of
civil strife, though it is hard to under
stand how men can be called civil while at
war.
With war news passing under his eyes
every day, trains going south with soldiers,
and cars coming north with the wounded,
it is not remarkable that the fever should
get into the young dispatcher blood. He
read of the great, sad Lincoln, whom he
had seen and heard and known, calling
for volunteers, and his blood rushed red
and hot through his veins. He talked to
the trainmen who came in to register, to
enginemen waiting for orders, to yardmen
in the yards, and to shopmen after hours,
and, many of them, catching the conta-
gion, urged him to organize company,
and he did. He continued to work days
and to drill his men in the twilight. He
would have been up and drilling at dawn
if he could have gotten them together. -
He inspired them with his quiet enthusi-
asm, held them by personal magnetism,
and by unselfsh patriotism kindled in the
breast of each of his fifty followers desire
to do something for his country. Grad
ually, the railroad, so dear to him, slipped
back to the second place in the affairs of
the earth. His country was first. To
be sure, there was no shirking of respon
sibility at the office, but the business OF
the company was never allowed to over
shadow the cause in which he had silently
but heartily enlisted. "Abe" Lincoln
was, to his way of reasoning, bigger
man than the President of the Chicago
and Alton Railroad, which was something
to concede. The country must be cared
for first, he argued, for what good would
road be with no country to run through ?
All day he would work at the dis
patchers office, tagging fast freights and
'Iaying out local passenger trains to the
end that the soldiers might be hurried
South. He would pocket the ''cannon
bali and order the "thunderbolt' held at
Alton for the soldiers special. ''Take
siding at Sundance for troop train, south
bound" he would flash out, and glory in
his power to help the government.
All day he would work and scheme for
the company, and the Union; at night,
when the silver moonlight lay on the lot
back of the machine shops, he would drill
as long as he could hold the men together.
They were all stout and fearless young fell
lows, trained and accustomed to danger by
the hazard of their daily toll. They knew
| somatb;no of discinline were used to obey-