Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1884 — Building a Railroad. [ARTICLE]

Building a Railroad.

One day last fall a number of Virginians got together at Wheeling and organized a railroad company with a capital of $30,000,000. Directors and officers were elected, a prospectus written, a memorial askiDg for a charter drawn up, and the meeting adjourned for a week. Two or three days later the President met one of the most enthusiastic of his co-laborers and said: “Our whole project is dished!” “No?” “Sure’s you live!” “How’s that?” “Why yesterday I got a horse and moved over the first five miles of the proposed line. I discovered that we should need ten cattle guards, six culverts, and a SSOO bridge in that distance, making qn outlay of at least SI,OOO, and we might as well lay down our cards.” “Why, Colonel?” “Why? Because the whole idiotic gang of us will be dead-broke by the time we pay for the printing of that prospectus and give a reporter $5 for booming the project.” “That’s so—that’s so,” mused the other. “Why, Colonel, I never had the remotest idea that we would want to use a dollar except to buy French mirrors for the President’s office.— Wall Street News.