Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1910-07-12
T RAINS.
Most Familiar Yet Romantic Things
In the World.

generations of children that step into
one another's little shoes and keep the
faculty Of rapture alive on earth. 1t is
a call and promise to all the restless
hearted, that want to get away from
their neighbors. their drudgery or
their own thoughts. 1t is n lure and a
mystery and an embodiment of the in
visible and unspeakable to the poet.
He will pause on a windy hilltop. call
down his gaze from the unplumbed
blue overhead to watch the noon mail
traverse the bit Of clear skyline on the
opposite ridge. The train roars afar
off, like the surf on sand: comes fast
into view; crosses its allotted space
and is gone. 1t passes slowly enough
as the watch ticks, yet urgent and low
greyhound or a racing horse, 1t con-
veys the impression of matchless We
locity. 1t goes like hunted thing in a
dream, that makes desperate haste and
can barely creep by the tagging land
marks. 1t was not, it was there. 1t
was gone. 1t came out of the unknown
infinite, and passed again into the in
finite unknown. 1t is a daily recurrent
symbol.
Life Is a moment between two eter-
mites. a wild swallows light through
lighted hail. a train that goes by
along a hill-crest. At night the lonely
hooting of the engine in the darkness
draws a poet to his balcony to watch
the regular lights flash by far above
on the high horizon, and see the sud-
den flare, ruddy against the level trail
of smoke. vibrating dimly outward,
through the thick black air, even to
the rim Of things. Under all the sky,
in thick weathers. in certain aspects,
the glow seems to mingle with the
gray of night and change the colors
of ito suffuse it all with impalpable
golddust; the tawny plume of smoke.
the golden patches of the windows, the
hurrying silhouette Of dull black solu-
tions and bewildering progressions Of
modern music. They have the same
air of suggesting what experience has
not known. of stirring memories which
must reach to the other side of birth
antenatal dreams, intangible expecta-
tions.
The stablest and fastest-rooted feel
the spell of this swift power that
passes. At the whistle of the down
express, farmers lean on their hoes,
straighten their backs, push back their
hats; the wives come to doors. dish
towels or white sewing in hand; the
brown faced, pale haired children
draw up in line, like soldiers at salute.
They are rooted as fast as their solid
cabbages and cedar fence posts; but
their interest vaguely reaches out, fol-
lows the laundering cars little way,
though 1t comes back before the birds
have settled down again in their hun
dreds on the sagging telegraph wires.
Deep in the country the daily trains
come to be mere phenomena Of nature,
like dawn and twilight, noon and dew
fall, white frosts, new moons and the
change Of the leaf. They are acknowl-
edged rather than attended to; but
they held to set the time Of the
pulse, the rhythm of the days. Indeed,
the dullest use. and won't cannot quite
ignore them. Even at the city's squal-
idest edge, where a hundred trains, 1t
must be, pass before dark, and again
a hundred before day, women at the
dirty windows lift their heads; chill
dren on the burning pavements stand
and stare.
The purblindest man who most reli-
giously follows his nose must stop and
catch his breath a moment i'm a great
train-yard at nightfall, with its eddy
ing stream and volleying smoke, with
it's looming and drifting bulks and
glimmerng lines of rail: it's winking
lights, red, green and blue, it's haring
gas torches, its great silvery moons of
the arc-light hanging over all; the
roaring and thunder and shrek or
power in action, Of earth shaken mass
es in motion, of metal grinding metal,
and vapor rending vapor; its vistas Of
shadows and vaster distances OF
lights; it's pitchy cuttings and efful-
gent subway; it's great. viaducts
stretched black across the luminous
blue of the untroubled night. For a
moment he must see the splendor Of 1t
all. Incompatible decorative mate
rial is here, and painter and draughts-
man nowadays love the rail.
Poet and artist are at one with <
wayfarer. The born traveller, to whom
all possible modes of conveyance are
allurement and dalliance, will choose
this if he can. He is never weary Of
reading time tables. The railway, he
will urge, is fraught with beauty and
romance, and yet is entirely practica-
BILE. To travel by carriage is quaint
and charming way; but he would no
more try it than he would express his
feelings in ''Zounds!" and Good
lack" 1t is out of date. Motoring,
on the other hand, is a costly pleas
uTe, anu lllS pun DC 10 ''o'N'
Motorcars are out of reach. But the
train is there; the train is cheap; the
train is various. 1t gives him soli-
tude for a price, and company for
plain ticket. 1t gives, into the bargain,
as much human nature as a philan-
thropist could digest, or a tramp. 1t
fits the body with wheels, but the soul
with wings, and sends that airily voy-
aging through strange seas Of thought
alone.
To lie awake and feel oneself plunG-
ing and laundering through the un-
known; to hear the locomotive warn
and call, and call ahead again, and to-
realize the darkness closing in behind,
is to be, for a moment, bigger than
ones body. 1t is to spread wider
wings than the mornings, and to brood
above the illimitable as dawn broois
on the sea. Just as the power of love
takes one beyond merely loving. s."
the power Of space takes one on be-
yond space. An immense freight train,
painting across the continent with