Wadsworth semi-weekly dispatch. [volume] (Wadsworth, Nev.) 1899-1904, 1904-04-15
THE A OF THE
LAST LOCOMOTIVE

The engine was infirm and old.
The iron horse of speed and power
Gould scarce have seen q sadder hour.
This theme OF poet, bard and muse
Was sold for scrap iron to the Jews.
The last of all her tribe was She
Cook, Baldwin or Schenectady.
Her comrades all had quit the race,
They'd fallen into deep disgrace
For blowing up and killing men;
For breaking down both now and then;
For being late both there and back
Or passing on a single track,
With dire results, you know full we'll,
More awful than the tongue can tell.
Her friends no more would climb the hill,
They'd been run through the rolling mill.
Their massive parts rolled out like dough,
Or melted in the cupola.
| And she, neglected and suppressed,
Longed to be with them and at rest.
| Old times we're changed, old manner gone;
New kings ruled Interpretations throne.
The critics OF the iron time
Had called her harmless murders crime.
She'd run, with all her weight and power,
But one scant hundred miles an hour;
This falte.ing gait, too slow by far,
To be OF use in peace or war.
Sad, in the round-h0use she did lie,
No humber resting place was nigh;
Her slaves to fire her had begun
To make her last and final run.
They filled her fire bex up with coal.
The steam and smoke began to roll;
Soon was the sky obscured by smoke,
And thus the largest engine spoke:
i've hauled the earth's land trafhc for the
last two hundred years."
Her voice then sadly trembled, her eyes filled
up with tears.
She heaved q sigh of anguish, 'twould grieve
ones very soul.
Each tear a barrel Of water, each sigh . ton OF
coal.
"T'ye burned the worlds supply of fuel. I've
oftentimes been late,
Although | was built at Baldwin's and my
pedigree Is straight.
l have used up all the iron on earth, and nearly
all the wood,
I've tried to use a great deal more and would
have II | could.
But yet, It's true, that in my time l kept a
rapid pace,
Ny running and repairs employed one-third the
human race.
The better third, for none besile the valient
and the strong
Can WELD a sledge Of thirty pounds or wrenches
ten feet long;
Or tread the freight cars footboard along the
narrow fence,
Where limbs are worth q quarter and life worth
thirty cents;
Or tunnel through the mountain, or span the
rushing tide,
Or brave the terrors Of the cab, the worst OF all
besides"
The locomotive faltered, her voice was faint
anu weak;
They started up the air-pump, she sighed and
They took her out to water one hundred barrels
she drank;
The coal man at the bunker put ten tons on her
tank.
She was now SO well provided, as was proved
by many trials,
Barring breakdowns and collisions, she COLD
Or to state the case more clearly, to illustrate,
as they say,
A hOI Sc could go much farther on three pounds
of barley hay;
A donkey could do better on an oyster can, I
think.
Or a man could make the journey on a ten-cent
A ship could beat her record without rudder,
mast or sails,
Or an ostrich could go farther on a pint OF
shingle nails.
But now TO resume my story of the locomo-
tive's flight,
She started toward the mountains as they call
1t. running light"
But, however, light or heavy, yet the weight
the track would feel
tons OF steel.
Then she labored up the hillside and the noise
was heard afar,
Like the fleets Of mighty nations in exterminat-
Ing war.
AS she struggled onward, upward, louder did
the tumult grow,
As explosions on the ptstons kicked the cross
heads to and fro:
Till the thunder OF the side rods shook the
erusting of the earth;
Echoes then reverberated mid the hills that
gave them birth. 4
In the distance y volcano hid in shame its lofty
head,
And a terror-stricken rabbit into it for safety
fled.
Then u great f~erocious grizzly, monarch of the
hill and plain,
HE'D him there in holy horror from the rushing
OF the train.
Soon she entered in the snowsheds, In this
housing DER the rails;
Many million miles OF lumber, many thousand
Tons OF nails
Were employed to save the roadway from Dame
Nature S fierce attack,
When she fought in frenzied fury to destroy the
railroad track,
And repel this rude invader, monster lend of
iron ane brass,
Who had wrought such desolation on thai
rugged mountain pass.
As the mountains all around there for a hun
dred miles were bare,
Desolation reigned triumphant, solitude was
Shorn of all their SYLVAN beauty, barren as the
desert drear,
Where through groves OF pine and hemlock once
roamed herds Of elk and deer.
Then at last she reached the city, where her
journey was to end,
She stood lonely on the siding, was not left q
single friend.
No one came to wash the boiler, no one came to
There was dearth Of boiler-makers, no machin-
lists fingered there;
But the hostler was beside her, looking ut the
water OoZe
From a score of broken stay bolts and a hun
dred leaking f1ues,
Idly sitting on the side rods while the steam
And he asked the locomotive If she'd ing
to say.
Take a message and a token to some dear
old friends of mine:
Tell them I'd have killed them II I'd had the
time;
Take the shovel to the Fireman, bid him hang it
In his room;
Tell him that he can forever ditch the coal
pick and the broom.
And II suicide still tempts him, if he's weary
Let him try some better method than to worl,