"If ever I get that way, I'll know it myself," says he, "and it will be high time for me to get out." After all, his service on this extra-fast train may not exceed ten years. A man whose nerve was not iron and his physique steel could not last one-third of that time. According to the insurance figures of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, to which Freeman and most of his fellows belong, eleven years and seven days is the average length of service for an engineer upon an American railroad. The railroad managers figure it a little differently and place the average at something over twelve years. And out in the West, where the railroads span the mountains and thread the canyons, the man in the engine cab will rarely last more than six years. Of course the situation varies on different railroads. Before me lies the report of the Boston and Albany Railroad--impressive because of the length of the service of the engineers of that staunch property. It is the habit of that railroad to give annual passes to the employees who have been in its service more than fifteen years. More than half of its engineers receive such passes. And early in the present year it retired from active service Engineer James W. Chamberlain, who had been in its employ more than fifty-three years. And for a dozen years past Chamberlain had been piloting two of the road's fastest trains between Boston and Springfield. You cannot always rely upon averages. * * * * * We are within five miles of B----, where our ride in the engine cab ends. Around us is the typical vicinage of a growing American town already almost great--gas tanks, factories, truck gardens, encroaching upon these the neat pattern of new streets upon which small houses are rearing their heads--close round about us the railroad yards, vast in their ramifications and peopled with a seemingly infinite number of red and blue and yellow freight cars. There is a trail of them close beside Freeman's arm. The trail culminates in a caboose which shows flags and we know that it is a freight that has just come scampering down the line into the yard--a bare five or six minutes leeway to get out of our way--out of the way of the trains whose delays mean personal reports and excuses to the "old man," a practical, hard-headed railroader who has a fine contempt for excuses of every sort. "You writer fellows like to talk about the heroes of the engine cab," says the fireman; "the boy who is pulling that greasy old Baldwin comes nearer being a hero than Jimmie or any of the rest of the passenger bunch."