But railroading was what gave me the first wrench from the home tree. It happened one evening I wandered over the hills to the end of the little jerk-line that ran our way, and watched the hostler put the engine in the shed for the night. It was a small tea-pot of an engine that one of our Western 'Guls could smear all over the track and never know there'd been an accident, but, man! she looked big to me. And the hostler! Well, I classed him with the lad that hooked half-dollars out of the air at the Sunday-school show, and took a rabbit out of Judge Smalley's hat. But the hostler was a still more wonderful man. I tried to figure if he'd ever speak to me, and what I should do if he did. Every time I got the chores done early, I skipped it over to the railroad, till finally the hostler he sees a long-legged boy eating him with his eyes, and he says: "Hello, bub!" I scuffed my feet and said, "Good morning." The hostler spit careful over the top of the switch and says, with one eye shut, "Like a ride?" Well!! Howsomever, it seemed manners to me to refuse all pleasant propositions, so I said "no" and prepared to slide away. But he was a wise man. "Better come down to the shed," he says. So I climbed aboard with no more talk. "This is the throttle," says he. "You pull that and she goes: try it." Notwithstanding I expected that engine to explode and scatter us the minute a strange hand was laid on her, I wrastled my nerve together and moved the lever a tiny bit. "Chow!" says the old engine, "Chow-chow-chow!" and I near had a fit with pride and scaredness. It _is_ a great sensation to hold them big critters under your hand. I never knew an engineer yet that got rid of it entirely. So there was me, white in the face with grandeur, hogging the engine into the shed. I couldn't sleep much that night. When I did doze off, it was to travel a great many miles a minute on a road-bed laid flat against the side of a mountain, with an engine that had wash-tubs for drivers, and was run by winding up by a crank, like the old clock in the hall. Lord! how I whizzed around the turns! Grinding away like a lunatic, until the road ended--just ended, that's all, and off we went into the air. From that on I had business at the railroad every evening I could get off.