RAILROADSA railroad is like a lie--you have to keep building to it to make it
stand. A railroad is a ravenous destroyer of towns, unless those towns
are put at the end of it and a sea beyond, so that you can't go further
and find another terminus. And it is shaky trusting them, even then, for
there is no telling what may be done with trestle-work. The romance of boating is gone, now. In Hannibal the steamboatman is
no longer a god. The youth don't talk river slang any more. Their pride
is apparently railways--which they take a peculiar vanity in reducing
to initials ("C B & Q")--an affectation which prevails all
over the west. They roll these initials as a sweet morsel under the tongue. |
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