Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1905-04-05

cars ana trucks, ana ever Hying paSt
him. like huge dragons in dusky
cavern, long trains that rush at light
ming speed, bearing thousands of
human souls. In safety-or to dis
aster? 1t all lies with the trackman.
The first sensation as one stands
, on the bottom of the Subway is a
feeling of surprise at the size of the
excavation. 1t seems suddenly TO
have grown twice as deep as it looked
from the station platform. And as
it grew deeper, it must have grown
narrower.
ROAR LIKE AN AvALANCHE.
Here comes "local," rumbling its
steady way down toward Brooklyn
Bridge. Its red and white lights
glare fiercely and it rushes along
with an impressive air of irresisti.
bility. With sudden sense of small
ness, feeling that the oars must
suddenly have grown much larger,
you shrink into the narrow space
occupied by the long line of pillars
that divide the local from the express
and wonder if the train is intermina.
BILE. 1t really seems as if it never
would pass.
And just as you realize it's last car
is near there is sudden shock,
roar like an avalance, a swrirling
whirlpool of air that almost throws
you off your feet. You cling to
pillar, wondering with sudden
numb, curious sensation in the brain,
what awful catastrophe has hap
pened. Surely it must be wreck.
Scores of times it happens to him
each day. Whenever he steps out
of the way of an incoming train AMI
the ears are beaten and buffeted by
the roar, his eyes must do duty to
guard him from the ever-present
danger of the express from the oppo-
site direction, flying at forty miles
an hour, lest it dash down upon him
unseen and unheard and shatter him
in fragments.
So with every sense alert he plods
steadily along in the dusk, his head
bent as he scans the rails, keenly
alive to his surroundings, the danger
and the darkness.
He is not careless, for the price of
carelessness is death. He is not
talkative, for the roar of the Subway
soon begets silence. Above ground
he walks bent. t.shouldered, for long
hours of careful scrutiny in the
depths of the Subway have made it
habit. The lines of his face deepen,
and strengthen. Around the eyes
come those tiny wrinkles that betoken
keen sight, striving to pierce the
dark-such eyes as are given to pilots
and engineers. Tense nerves soon
show in the face, and the anxious
look begot of ten hours day soon
becomes the fixed expression.
The strain shows. Darkness and
danger and death-at twenty-one
cents an hour-soon write their
story on the human countenance, and
the man becomes for all lifetime what
he is for those terrible ten hours
day-one long, living agony of
suspense.
DEATH HoVEES CLOSE.
In daylight it would be bad
enough, but in the semi darkness the
strain is almost beyond comprehen-
sion. For the fear that comes with
darkness is an Inheritance from all
the ages, and the man of to-day is
descended from the man who lived in
cave, and worshipped the sun for
its heat and light, is exactly like his
prehistoric ancestor. He could not
tell you why, but he, too, is afraid of
the dark. Like prehistoric man he
fears, yet knows not what.
Death hovers so close to him that
by-and-by he becomes accustomed to
the constant companionship of the
grim spectre, and his mind and body
act involuntariy. He does not feel