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There were two passenger-cars, roofed, but wide open all around. These cars were not tilted back, but the seats were; this enables the passenger to sit level while going down a steep incline. There are three railway-tracks; the central one is cogged; the "lantern wheel" of the engine grips its way along these cogs, and pulls the train up the hill or retards its motion on the down trip.
Tidings of general surrender had overhauled him on the way to it, near, I think, the city of Baltimore somewhere in that region, at any rate; and he had been paroled and liberated, and had started penniless and on foot, south-westward along the railway-tracks.
There were two passenger-cars, roofed, but wide open all around. These cars were not tilted back, but the seats were; this enables the passenger to sit level while going down a steep incline. There are three railway-tracks; the central one is cogged; the "lantern wheel" of the engine grips its way along these cogs, and pulls the train up the hill or retards its motion on the down trip.
In the warm, Summer evenings, men in shirt-sleeves sit on the front steps and stolidly smoke, while children pile up sand in the streets and play in the gutters. Parallel with Mickle Street, a block away, are railway-tracks. It was in August of Eighteen Hundred Eighty-three that I first walked up that little street a hot, sultry Summer evening.
In a few years improved routes, railway-tracks, and houses for food and lodging will rob the Klondike region of its terrors, but until then death must exact a heavy toll from the gold-seekers crowding northward, without regard to season or the simplest laws of prudence. Roswell was standing on the upper deck, near a corner, when he exclaimed excitedly: "Oh, look there! Isn't it dreadful?"
Yellow country roads, shining railway-tracks and blue canals ran along between the districts like embroidered loops. Linköping lay around its cathedral like a pearl-setting around a precious stone; and the gardens in the country were like little brooches and buttons. There was not much regulation in the pattern, but it was a display of grandeur which one could never tire of looking at.
I did not know before, that a half-mile of sextuple railway-tracks could be made such an adornment. One thinks Heidelberg by day with its surroundings is the last possibility of the beautiful; but when he sees Heidelberg by night, a fallen Milky Way, with that glittering railway constellation pinned to the border, he requires time to consider upon the verdict.
I turned and made my way to the ferry past the whispering lovers on the doorsteps, and over the railway-tracks where the noisy engines puffed. As I walked on board the boat, the wind blew up cool and fresh from the West. The star in the East grew brighter, and other stars came out, reflecting themselves like gems in the dark blue of the Delaware.
But the train never slackens speed. The engineer keeps on blowing the whistle, and the train thunders along at the usual rate. Then you will notice when you get near those crossings that all the gates are down and the railway-tracks are perfectly clear. That is the way with many of the difficulties we face in life.
If any of you boys and girls, while riding through a great city on an express train, ever chance to put your head out of the car-window and look forward along the tracks, you will see several blocks ahead of the train people in carriages, on foot, and in street-cars crossing the railway-tracks in great numbers, and it seems as if the train would have to stop, or else it would run over somebody.
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