"If you can recollect the blizzard that Roscoe Conkling went down in

one March day in the streets of New York, it will give you the date;

possibly call to your mind the storm. I had the River Division then,

and we got through the whole winter without a single tie-up of

consequence until March.

"The morning was still as June. When the sky went heavy at noon it

looked more like a spring shower than a snow-storm; only, I noticed

over at the government building they were flying a black flag splashed

with a red centre. I had not seen it before for years, and I asked for

ploughs on every train out after two o'clock.

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"Even then there was no wickedness abroad; it was coming fairly heavy

in big flakes, but lying quiet as apple-blossoms. Toward four o'clock

I left the office for the roundhouse, and got just about half-way

across the yard when the wind veered like a scared semaphore. I had

left the depot in a snow-storm; I reached the roundhouse in a blizzard.

"There was no time to wait to get back to the keys. I telephoned

orders over from the house, and the boys burned the wires, east and

west, with warnings. When the wind went into the north that day at

four o'clock, it was murder pure and simple, with the snow sweeping the

flat like a shroud and the thermometer water-logged at zero.

"All night it blew, with never a minute's let-up. By ten o'clock half

our wires were down, trains were failing all over the division, and

before midnight every plough on the line was bucking snow--and the snow

was coming harder. We had given up all idea of moving freight, and

were centring everything on the passenger trains, when a message came

from Beverly that the fast mail was off track in the cut below the

hill, and I ordered out the wrecking gang and a plough battery for the

run down.

"It was a fearful night to make up a train in a hurry--as much as a

man's life was worth to work even slow in the yard a night like that.

But what limit is set to a switchman's courage I have never known,

because I've never known one to balk at a yardmaster's order.

"I went to work clearing the line, and forgot all about everything

outside the train-sheet till a car-tink came running in with word that

a man was hurt in the yard.

"Some men get used to it; I never do. As much as I have seen of

railroad life, the word that a man's hurt always hits me in the same

place. Slipping into an ulster, I pulled a storm-cap over my ears and

hurried down stairs buttoning my coat. The arc-lights, blinded in the

storm, swung wild across the long yard, and the wind sung with a scream

through the telegraph wires. Stumbling ahead, the big car-tink, facing

the storm, led me to where between the red and the green lamps a dozen

men hovered close to the gangway of a switch engine. The man hurt lay

under the forward truck of the tender.




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