Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1900 — THE YOUNGEST ENGINEER. [ARTICLE]

THE YOUNGEST ENGINEER.

Buster (Aged Four) Runs an Engine Lika an Old-Timer. In Laramie, Wyo., there lives the youngest engineer in the world. His name is Hume Gibson Richards, but everybody calls him “Buster,” because, though he is only four years old, and small at that, he can run a great Union Pacific engine as well as anyone, and what he doesn’t about the parts of a locomotive and the care of it is hardly worth acquisition, says George Dollar in the Strand Magazine for October. “Buster” has a regulation engineer’s suit, and an oil-can almost as large as himself, and though of course he isn’t hired to run the company’s great express trains, he spends a great deal of his time on the giant engines, and is never so happy as when “oiling up” for a run. “Buster” began early to show aptitude for many things. Before he was three years old he could tell the names of all the prominent generals and admirals of the United States army and navy, and the battles they had fought. At 3| years he could tell every nation on the globe, and the names of it* inhabitants. He can name every state, river, lake, territory, on the North American continent, and knows many parts of South America. He can ask questions of anyone until he tires his informer, or “queers” him—but then, <r ßuster” isn’t the only four-year-old boy who can do that!