On Freeman's road they do not penalize a man for failing to make his time, by finding some other excuse and then quietly removing him from his run. On the contrary, there are maximum speed limits for every mile of the main line and its branches--ways by which the road knows that the maximums are not being exceeded. And Freeman likes to quote the big boss of one of the big roads--Daniel Willard, come from an engine cab to be president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Once, when discussing this very question, Willard said: "If there is a rule on our railroad that delays an engineman and tends to prevent his making his schedule time we want to know it--at once. If we believe the rule is wrong we will remove it. If not, and it delays the trains, we will lengthen their running time." In fact, the steady tendency of all American roads during the past ten years has been toward lengthening schedules rather than shortening them. The two whirlwind trains between New York and Chicago now take twenty hours for the trip, instead of eighteen, as was the case when they were first installed. The famous run of the Jarrett and Palmer special in 1876, from Jersey City to Oakland on San Francisco Bay, in four days flat, still stands almost as a transcontinental record, while the fastest running time ever accredited to a locomotive--112-1/2 miles an hour by a New York Central locomotive with four cars, for a short distance between Rochester and Buffalo--was accomplished more than twenty years ago. The railroads are playing fairer with their Jimmie Freemans. The men who sit on the right-hand side of the engine cabs appreciate that. They know the responsibility that sits unseen, but not unnoticed, at the side of the man who guides the locomotive. * * * * * "We've passed the sixty mark," shouts Freeman's fireman into your ear. Above the din of the engine you catch his words as the faintest of whispers. And you look ahead at the curving track. Curving? Forever curving, and each time it swerves and the path that we are eating up at the rate of eighty-eight feet to the second is lost behind the brow of a hill or through a clump of trees, your heart rises to your mouth and you wonder if all is well just over there beyond. And then you remember that the friendly raised arm of the block semaphore has said "yes." The engineer's figure is immobile but his mind is alert. His touch upon the throttle is as light as that of a child. His face, half hidden behind his great goggles, is expressionless. Yet behind those same protecting glasses the windows of his soul are open--and watching, watching, forever watching the curving track. Sometimes the track curves away from his side of the cab, and then the fireman climbs up on his seat behind and picks up the lookout. But he does not pick up Freeman's responsibility. * * * * * Freeman has a high regard for signals. He never permits them to become monotonous.