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Updated: May 20, 2025
Still another poet, honored throughout the world, has also found a hero in the engine-driver, and Rudyard Kipling will no doubt be followed by others. But my dream of becoming a locomotive-driver faded, and while in college I speculated not a little as to what, after all, should be my profession. The idea of becoming a clergyman had long since left my mind.
As he pondered, he found himself opposite the engine, which was being oiled, wiped, and generally caressed by its affectionate driver, a burly man with an oil-can in one hand and a lump of cotton-waste in the other. 'Hullo, mother! said the engine-driver, 'what's the trouble? You don't look particularly cheerful.
Another night, however, he succeeded in carrying off the native driver of the pumping-engine, and soon afterwards added several other victims to his list. On one occasion an engine-driver arranged to sit up all night in a large iron water-tank in the hope of getting a shot at him, and had a loop-hole cut in the side of the tank from which to fire.
There was only one explanation for it: our rivals must have "got at" the engine-driver. However, be that as it may, we hung very closely on to their heels, and always viewed them when the course of the line was at all straight.
Of course, he had never washed a shirt in his life, and couldn't if he tried and, anyhow, he wasn't going to begin; but he thought: 'When I get safely home to Toad Hall, and have money again, and pockets to put it in, I will send the engine-driver enough to pay for quite a quantity of washing, and that will be the same thing, or better.
Suddenly the repeated whistling of a distant locomotive made us listen attentively. We then heard two, three, and four crackers bursting under our wheels. We could perfectly well feel the efforts the engine-driver was making to slacken speed, but before he could succeed we were thrown against each other by a frightful shock.
We had acknowledged ourselves to be no fitting colleagues for Mark Tapley, and would have been glad to escape from Cairo even had we worked our way out of the place as assistant stokers to the engine-driver. Poor Cairo! unfortunate Cairo! "It is about played out!" said its citizen to me. But in truth the play was commenced a little too soon.
I speculated upon the chain of injustice and oppression that had warped his destiny from what it ought to have been to what it was. 'And he, too, is human, and knows love and grief and illusion, like me, I mused. A few yards further on the engine-driver and stoker were busy with coal and grease.
'Any amount of 'em, sobbed Toad. 'And they'll be hungry and playing with matches and upsetting lamps, the little innocents! and quarrelling, and going on generally. O dear, O dear! 'Well, I'll tell you what I'll do, said the good engine-driver. 'You're a washerwoman to your trade, says you. Very well, that's that.
The money was handed over to the engine-driver, who sent it off to Mobile. It was only just as we were actually starting that I had the vision of the responsibility I had taken upon myself, for it was risking without their consent the lives of thirty-two persons. It was too late then to do anything: the train had started, and at a terrific speed it touched the bridge of boats.
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