Yet I doubt whether the express trains on the New York Central, drawn by hundred-ton locomotives at a speed of sixty miles an hour, produce on the youth of the present generation anything like the impression made by those simple beginnings. The new personage who now attracted my homage was the locomotive-driver. To me his profession transcended all others. As he mounted the locomotive, and especially as he pulled the starting-bar, all other functions seemed insignificant. Every day I contemplated him; often I dreamed of him; saw him in my mind's eye dashing through the dark night, through the rain and hail, through drifting snow, through perils of ``wash- outs'' and ``snake-heads,'' and no child in the middle ages ever thought with more awe of a crusading knight leading his troops to the Holy City than did I think of this hero standing at his post in all weathers, conducting his train to its destination beyond the distant hills. It was indeed the day of small things. The traveler passing from New York to Buffalo in those days changed from the steamer at Albany to the train for Schenectady, there changed to the train for Utica, thence took the train for Syracuse, there stayed overnight, then took a train for Auburn, where he found the train for Rochester, and after two more changes arrived in Buffalo after a journey of two days and a night, which is now made in from eight to ten hours. But the locomotive-driver was none the less a personage, and I must confess that my old feeling of respect for him clings to me still. To this hour I never see him controlling his fiery steed without investing him with some of the attributes which I discerned in him during my childhood. It is evident to me that the next heroes whom poets will exploit will be the drivers of our railway trains and the pilots of our ocean steamers. One poet has, indeed, made a beginning already,--and this poet the Secretary of State of the United States under whom I am now serving, the Hon. John Hay. Still another poet, honored throughout the world, has also found a hero in the engine-driver, and Rudyard Kipling will no doubt be followed by others.