the yard in his tender, but he felt grateful for even this little word of consolation.

"We don't use hand-cars on the Pennsylvania," said the Consolidation. "That er peanutstand's old enough and ugly enough to speak for himself."

"He hasn't bin spoken to yet. He's bin spoke at. Hain't ye any manners on the Pennsylvania?" said the switching-loco.

"You ought to be in the yard, Poney," said the Mogul, severely. "We're all long-haulers here."

"That's what you think," the little fellow replied. "You'll know more 'fore the night's out. I've bin down to Track 17, and the freight there oh, Christmas!"

"I've trouble enough in my own division," said a lean, light suburban loco with very shiny brakeshoes. "My commuters wouldn't rest till they got a parlour-car. They've hitched it back of all, and it hauls worse'n a snow-plough. I'll snap her off some day sure, and then they'll blame every one except their fool-selves. They'll be askin' me to haul a vestibuled next!"

"They made you in New Jersey, didn't they?" " said Poney. "Thought so. Commuters and truck-wagons ain't any sweet haulin', but I tell you they're a heap better'n cuttin' out refrigerator-cars or oil-tanks. Why, I've hauled—"

"Haul! You?" said the Mogul, contemptuously. "It's all you can do to bunt a cold-storage car up the yard. Now, I-" he paused a little to let the words sink in-"I handle the Flying Freight-e-leven cars worth just anything you please to mention. On the stroke of eleven I pull out; and I'm timed for thirty-five an hour. Costly-perishable-fragile-immediate - that's me! Suburban traffic's only but one degree better than switching. Express freight's what pays." "Well, I ain't given to blowing, as a rule," began the Pittsburgh Consolidation.

"No? You was sent in here because you grunted on the grade," Poney interrupted.

"Where I grunt, you'd lie down, Poney: but, as I was saying, I don't blow much. Notwithstandin', if you want to see freight that is freight moved lively, you should see me warbling through the Alleghanies with thirty-seven ore-cars behind me, and my brakemen fightin' tramps so 's they can't attend to my tooter. I have to do all the holdin' back then, and, though I say it, I've never had a load get away from me yet. No, sir. Haulin''s one thing, but judgment and discretion 's another. You want judgment in my business."

"Ah! But-but are you not paralysed by a sense of your overwhelming responsibilities? said a curious, husky voice from a corner.

"Who's that?" .007 whispered to the Jersey

commuter.

"Compound-experiment-N. G. She's bin switchin' in the B. & A. yards for six months, when she wasn't in the shops. She's economical (I call it mean) in her coal, but she takes it out in repairs. Ahem! I presume you found Boston somewhat isolated, madam, after your New York season?"

66

"I am never so well occupied as when I am alone." The Compound seemed to be talking from half-way up her smoke-stack.

66

Sure," said the irreverent Poney, under his breath."They don't hanker after her any in the yard."

"But, with my constitution and temperament - my work lies in Boston - I find your outrecuidance -"

"Outer which?" said the Mogul freight. "Simple cylinders are good enough for me."

66

Perhaps I should have said faroucherie," hissed the Compound.

"I don't hold with any make of papier-mâché wheel," the Mogul insisted.

The Compound sighed pityingly, and said no

more.

"Git 'em all shapes in this world, don't ?" ye said Poney. "That's Mass'chusetts all over. They half start, an' then they stick on a dead-centre, an'

blame it all on other folks' ways o' treatin' them. Talkin' o' Boston, Comanche told me, last night, he had a hot-box just beyond the Newtons, Friday. That was why, he says, the Accommodation was held up. Made out no end of a tale, Comanche did."

"If I'd heard that in the shops, with my boiler out for repairs, I'd know 'twas one o' Comanche's lies," the New Jersey commuter snapped. "Hotbox! Him! What happened was they'd put an extra car on, and he just lay down on the grade and squealed. They had to send 127 to help him through. Made it out a hot-box, did he? Time before that he said he was ditched! Looked me square in the headlight and told me that as cool as as a water-tank in a cold wave. Hotbox! You ask 127 about Comanche's hot-box. Why, Comanche he was side-tracked, and 127 (be was just about as mad as they make 'em on account o' being called out at ten o'clock at night) took hold and snapped her into Boston in seventeen minutes. Hot-box! Hot fraud! That's

--

what Comanche is."

Then .007 put both drivers and his pilot into it, as the saying is, for he asked what sort of thing a hot-box might be?

"Paint my bell sky-blue!" said Poney, the switcher. "Make me a surface-railroad loco with a hard-wood skirtin'-board round my wheels.

Break me up and cast me into five-cent sidewalkfakirs' mechanical toys! Here's an eight-wheel coupled 'American' don't know what a hot-box is! Never heard of an emergency-stop either, did ye? Don't know what ye carry jack-screws for? You're too innocent to be left alone with your own tender. Oh, you—you flat-car!"

There was a roar of escaping steam before any one could answer, and .007 nearly blistered his paint off with pure mortification.

"A hot-box," began the Compound, picking and choosing her words as though they were coal, "a hot-box is the penalty exacted from inexperience by haste. Ahem!"

"Hot-box!" said the Jersey Suburban. "It's the price you pay for going on the tear. It's years since I've had one. It's a disease that don't attack short-haulers, as a rule."

66

"We never have hot-boxes on the Pennsylvania," said the Consolidation. 'They get 'em in New York-same as nervous prostration."

"Ah, go home on a ferry-boat," said the Mogul. "You think because you use worse grades than our road 'u'd allow, you're a kind of Alleghany angel. Now, I'll tell you what you Here's my folk. Well, I can't stop. See you later, perhaps."

He rolled forward majestically to the turn-table, and swung like a man-of-war in a tideway, till he