The Saint Paul globe., 1905-03-14
NARROWED

The mystery of the man in the iron
mask, the assailant of the late Mr..
William Patterson, the present where
'abouts OF Mr.. Tascott, the name of the
party who reared the Ephesian dome.
all of these instances of deep and
darkly veiled secrecy are as clear and
Jean Libby novel compared with the
gloom that enshrouds the life and do
ings OF the conductor of the union
depot car. His hapless condition
marooned on a peripatetic island on
wheels, going forever up and down
and about the streets of the city in a
vain quest for succor in the form of
fares that never see his signals of dis
tress-has appealed to thousands of
people who have wondered who he is
and how he came there. What hold
has Col. Lowry on the man? Why has
he condemned him to this lifelong
-servitude? Has he lost the power of
speech in the years of his isolation?
waiting for the return of this unfor-
tunate who is making vicarious atone
ment for the sins of the man who dis
covered the means of providing a
union depot car that avoids the union
depot. that is controlled by some power
which provides that it shall never ar
rive in time for any train nor depart
on the arrival of any incoming express?
'"@ His fate is inexpressibly sad. Time
was, in the early years of his impris-
onment in the union depot car, when
he knew the name of his fellow con-
has forgotten. The motorman is COM
paratively happy in his isolation. His
the wild exhilaration of running down
truckman occasionally; some touch
of human sympathy reaches him in the
curses bestowed by jehus whose way
he blocks. He is in the crowd il not
of it. But the conductor is utterly
alone. There is a tradition that in
the first year of his Imprisonment he
had passenger. A madman conduct
ing himself personally from the pro-
bate court to Rochester boarded the
union depot car. The tradition is pure
ly legendary and unsupported by any
testimony. The conductor displays no
evidences of ever having come in con-
tact with a fare. No aldermanic pass
ticket ever ticlkled his fingers, no trans
fer ever felt the cutting edge of his
punch. That he eats and sleeps is to
be assumed, though as for sleeping,
his whole existence might be given
over to it for all that anybody would
know except that he stands upright,
Gagged and in solitary confinement. his
hopeless countenance voicing an ap-
peal that is wordless to the throngs
who have seen him and wondered who
he is and why he is there
And no man sees the day of his
emancipation. The theory that he is
slave to duty has been exploited by
some philosophers who have evinced
passing interest in him as a subject
for academic discussion, but this is
secuted as being far-fetched. No man
would voluntarily undergo his trials,
his sense of being in the madding
throng but not of it, of doing an unend-
Ing Flying Dutchman stunt with no
port in sight and no passenger in the
gloomy den shrouded behind the dirt
begrimed windows. He must be un-
dergoing a sentence.
The public may interfere some time
and compel the union depot car con-
ductor's jailer to bring him back to
human ken and sympathy by making
the, car useful in the matter of carry
ing. passengers to and from the union
depot. But the outlook is bad for the
present. Under existing conditions we
can see no hope for him-unless some
friend Of the oppressed can get him
out on 4 writ Of habeas corpus.