The planter, smiling decorously, turned away, and the speaker looked again down the long vacant track to where the small dark focus of every one's attention was growing on the sight. He spoke again, in lower voice but with larger emotion. "Mind-power! thought-power! knowledge-power! learning and thinking power!" He caught his wife's arm. "See! see, Sidonie, my dear! See her enhancing in magnitude so fastly approaching!" As he spoke a puff of white vapor lifted from the object and spread out against the blue, the sunbeams turned it to silver and pearl, and a moment later came the far-away, long, wild scream of the locomotive. "Retire!" exclaimed the husband, drawing back all his gazing companions at once. "Retire! retire! the whisttel is to signify warning to retire from too close the edge of the galerie! There! rest at this point. 'Tis far enough. Now, each and all resolve to stand and shrink not whilst that iron mare, eating coal, drinking hot water, and spitting fire, shall seem, but falsely, threatening to come on the platform. Ah! Claude!" he cried to the youngest of the group, "now shall you behold what I have told you--that vast am-azement of civilize-ation anni-_high_-lating space and also time at the tune of twenty miles the hour!" He wheeled upon the planter--"Sir, do I exaggerate?" "Forty miles," replied the planter; "sometimes fifty." "Friends,--confirmated! more than twicefold confirmated. Forty, sometimes fifty! Thou heardest it, Maximian Roussel! Not from me, but from the gentleman himself! Forty, sometimes fifty! Such the march, the forward march of civilize-ation!" His words were cut short by the unearthly neigh of the engine. Sidonie smote herself backward against her husband. "Nay, Sidonie, fear thou nothing! Remember, dear Sidonie, thy promise of self-control! Stand boldly still, St. Pierre; both father and son, stand." The speaker was unheard. Hissing, clanging, thundering, and shaking the earth, the engine and train loomed up to the platform and stopped. "Come!" cried Bonaventure Deschamps; "lose no moment, dear friends. Tide and time--even less the railroad--wait for nobody. Claude, remember; give your ticket of passage to none save the conductor only. 'Tis print' in letter' of gold on front his cap--'Conductor'--Stop! he is here.--Sir, this young man, inexperienced, is taking passage for"-- "Shoot him aboard," replied a uniformed man, and walked on without a pause. Claude moved toward the train. Bonaventure seized him by both arms and gazed on him. "Claude St. Pierre! Claude, my boy, pride of Grande Pointe, second only with Sidonie, farewell!" Tears leaped into the eyes of both. Bonaventure snatched Claude to his arms and kissed him. It was less than nothing to him that every eye on and off the train was on them. He relaxed his grasp. "Sidonie! tell him farewell!--ah! nay! shake not hands only! Kiss her, Claude! Kiss him, my own Sidonie, kiss him farewell!"