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For a good many years it had been his custom to sit there, in the winter by the wood fire and in the summer just inside the open door, and to read off the headings aloud while I cleaned around the spring and polished glasses. "I see the president is going fishing, Minnie," he'd say, or "Airbrake is up to 133; I wish I'd bought it that time I dreamed about it.
"Ah, yes-s-s!" says she, throwin' open the back doors of the show window. "Zey are great bargains, those. Marked down but las' week. Thees wan m-m-m-m only $68; but wiz ze hat also, $93." And the gasp that gets out of Peyton sounds like openin' an airbrake. "Nine-ty three dollars!" says he. "For a simple little thing like that? Why, that seems to be rather exorbitant!"
He had time to yell at his fireman, to fling himself upon the throttle-bar and to set the airbrake before he began to turn Irish handsprings down the embankment; but the wrecking crew camped two whole days at Delhi gathering up the debris.
The parts I liked, though, wa'n't the ones that Marjorie got herself worked up over. It was the balcony scene she'd come for. When they got to that she grips the seat in front and glues her eyes on them two that was swappin' the long, lingerin' breakaway tackles, and every once in awhile she heaves up a sigh like cuttin' out an airbrake.
Likewise, when George Westinghouse, inventor of the airbrake, having finally persuaded the directors of the Pennsylvania Railroad, after many futile attempts in other directions, to grant him an opportunity to try out his invention, and, trying it out on a string of cars near Harrisburg ably demonstrated its practicability as a device for stopping trains and preventing accidents, he also as had Watt before him set the civilized world forward into an era full of promise and discovery as yet but barely entered upon, even with the remarkable progress already made in industry alone in the matter of regard for the safety of human life Westinghouse's own particular blazed trail through the forest of human ignorance this same airbrake.
"They have forgotten or neglected to couple the airbrake pipes up. Someday one of these crews will wreck us all. I have talked until I am tired. You see there is air on the front end of this train, but these show cars have not been coupled up with the air pipes of the regular train. It is very bad business. I'll report it when we get in tomorrow." "Let me. I know how to do it up brown."
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