As far back as he could remember, it had been the dream of Hosselkus’s life to be a regular passenger-engineer--in railroad parlance, to “pull varnished cars.” This was the goal upon the attainment of which the best efforts of his life had been concentrated, and still, after twenty years’ service, he seemed as far as ever from success. Many times he had almost achieved it, but always something had happened to prevent, some unaccountable and unavoidable piece of ill-luck. Finally, his name became so synonymous with disaster that the “Company” hesitated to intrust the valuable equipment of an express-train and the lives of the traveling public to him. Thus, as the years went by, old Hard Luck had become accustomed to crawling out from under the disgruntled engine of a side-tracked worktrain or way-freight to acknowledge the patronizing wave of the hand, as some former fireman of his whizzed by with a passenger-train or an “officers’ special.” Despair, however, had no place in his heart, and he still reveled in the fancied joys of pulling the fast express, and dreamed of that happy time when, to the customary inquiry as to the time of his departure, he would be able to answer: “I go out on Number Three.” There is a great difference in engineers; some can step off the foot-board at the end of a long run looking as fresh and clean as at the start, while, to judge from the appearance of others, one would imagine they had made the journey in the ash-pan. Hosselkus belonged to the latter class. It would have required some more powerful solvent than simple soap and water to have removed the soot and grime that had gradually accumulated in the wrinkles and hollows of his countenance during the years of arduous service. There was some excuse for him, however, seeing that so much of his life had been spent upon superannuated “ten-wheelers,” which, as every one knows, are awkward machines to oil, on account of their wheels being so low and close together. Then, too, he had so many accidents. He scarcely ever made a round trip without “slipping an eccentric,” “bursting a flue,” or “burning out his grates,” not to mention more serious mishaps, such as derailments, head and hind-end collisions, or running into slides and wash-outs. Much practice had made him almost perfect in “taking down a side,” or disconnecting a locomotive, while some of his exploits in the fire-box, plugging flues, rivaled the exhibition given by the Hebrew children in that seven times heated furnace of Holy Writ.