Action-and Eternal Vigilance.

Back in comfortable cushion seats, with the long, gently swaying coach riding as smoothly as a giant ocean liner on a level sea, one cannot grasp the picture up front. There it is nothing but action, action, action! And, eternal vigilance. And all because a speed-demanding public has forced the evolution of locomotive-building from the early wheelbarrow type and size to the present elephant-like proportions. Yet, speed-demons that many of these fast trains are, they are safe. A tenderfoot, up in a cab for the first time, gets the impression that a pile-up is almost inevitable. Back in the coaches, one rarely thinks of accident, while riding. He basks in a feeling of security and comfort. Even a receding track, observed from the rear end of a parlour car, is unimpressive. But, up front, the right-of-way, the towns, the switches, the bridges, the curves-they all come at you. The old difference, I presume, between attack and retreat.

We made the hundred miles that dismal, murky, depressing night, from station-stop to station-stop, in two hours and fifteen minutes, gross time consumed. And, in addition to the other hazards I mentioned, we passed through 18 towns and 9 miles of slow-going terminal, entering St. Louis.

It will take a worse crab than I, hereafter, to smirk when the parlour-car conductor on a fast train comes through to collect my extra fare.