the summit, and the speed is reduced to a proper rate by the application of the brakes on, say, one-third or one-half the cars, it will perhaps be found that one or two brakes too many have been put on and that the train is running too slowly. Some of them must then be loosened. Or perhaps some are set so tightly that the friction heats the wheels unduly or causes them to slide along the track instead of rolling; then those brakes must be released and some on other cars applied instead; and all this must be done (sometimes for an hour) when the temperature is 20 degrees below zero, or the wind is blowing a gale, just as under more favorable circumstances. A train moving at 20 miles an hour against a wind with a velocity of 30 miles increases the latter to 50, so far as the brakeman is concerned; and if rain or sleet is falling, the force of it on his hands and face is very severe. If we add to this the danger attendant upon stepping from one car to another over a gap of 27 to 30 inches, in a dark night, when the cars are constantly moving up and down on their springs and are swaying to one side or the other every few seconds, we get some idea of, though we cannot realize, the sensations that must at such times fill the minds of the men whose pleasant berth seems so enjoyable on a mild summer's day. And this is not an overdrawn picture or the worst that might be given; for rain and snow combined often coat the roofs of cars so completely and solidly that they are worse than the smoothest skating-pond, and moving upon them is attended with danger at every step. Jumping--it cannot be called walking--from one car to another is in such cases positively reckless. The brake-apparatus will in a snow-storm be coated with ice so rapidly that vigorous action is required to keep it in working condition. Even a wind alone, in dry weather, sometimes compels the men to _crawl_ from one car to another, grasping such projections as they may. The brakeman who forgets to take his rubber coat and overalls sometimes suffers severely from sudden changes of temperature. In spring or fall a lively shower will be encountered in a sheltered valley, and the clothing be completely drenched, and then within perhaps half an hour the ascent of a few hundred feet brings the train into an atmosphere a few degrees below the freezing point, so that with the aid of the wind, fanned by the speed of the train, the clothes are very soon frozen stiff. [Illustration: Flagging in Winter.]