Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1892 — How to “ Saw By.” [ARTICLE]

How to “ Saw By.”

Some boys do only what they have seen done by somebody else; other boys, the boys who make a mark in the world, look at things with their own eyes, and if a thing needs to be done, set about doing it. Without brag or bluster they act as if their motto were, “What man has not done, man can do.” Of one such boy the Washington Post prints a characteristic anecdote. A few years ago a green country boy applied to the superintendent of a Western railway for work, and, somewhat against the superintendent’s wish, on account of the danger to life and limb attendant upon such occupation, 'was given a place as brakeman of a freight train. On one of his first trips it happened that his train met another freight train at a station where the side track was not long enough to accommodate either of them. The conductors were debating which train should back tip to a point where they could pass, when the new hand ventured to suggest that neither should back; that they could pass each other by means of the short side track if the thing was managed right. The idea excited a good deal of laughter on the part of the old trainmen, but the boy stood his ground. “Well, how would you go about it?” asked one of the conductors, confident that the lad would soou find himself against a stump. The boy took up a stick and traced in the sand a diagram to illustrate his plan. “Good gracious!” said the conductor, “I believe that will do it!” And it did do it. To-day every trainman in America knows how to “saw by” two long trains on a short side track, but it is not so generally known that the thing was never done until an inexperienced country boy, who is now the manager of a great railway line, worked out the problem for himself.