Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1883 — A Draped Looomotine. [ARTICLE]

A Draped Looomotine.

Burlington Hawkeye. "To me,” the sad passenger said, "there is something inexpressibly mournful in a draped locomotive; and especially so, when it is draped in mourning for a dead engineer. The president of a railway company stands a long way from the enand when he dies'the engine mourns as we sorrow for s rich unde whom we never saw and who left us nothing. But the man who was a part of the engine’s life, who spurred her up the long, steep mountain grades, and coaxed her around dizzy curves, and sent her down the long, level stretches with the flight of an arrow, who knew how to humor all her caprices, and coaxed and petted and urged her through blinding storms and ray lees night, and blistering heat and stinging cold, until engine and engineer seemed to be body and soul of one existence—then, when this man at last gets his final orders and crosses the dark river alone, with only the fadeless target-lights of sure and eternal promise gleaming brightly on the other side; and-when there is a new man oh the right-hand side, and a new face looks out of the engineer’s window, then I think I can see profound and sincere sorrow in the panting spirit of power, standing in the station draped with fluttering sable emblems of its woe, waiting for the caressing touches of the dead hands that it will never feel again. And engineers tell me that for days and days the engine is fretful under the new hands; it is restless and moody, starts off nervously and impatiently sometimes, and then drops into a sullen gait and loses time; that no man can get so much out of an engi ie as its own engineer. “Do you remember only a year or two ago,” the jester said, “only last summer I believe it was, an engineer on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, running west from Chicago, died on his engine? Died right in his place running between Galesburg and Monmouth, and sat there with his hand on the lever, and his sightless eyes staring glassily down the track, unnoticed until the fireman looked up to see why he did not whistle for Monmouth station. And how many miles that train had thundered along with the dead engineer looking <>ut of the cab window into eternity, no one knew and no one knows.”