of this picture give a good idea of the first locomotive and train of passenger-cars ever run in the state of New York. The cars are those which had been used for a year with horses on this same route. A great crowd assembled on August 9, 1831, to see the train start. The fortunate guests of the road climbed into their seats, the engineer took his place on the tender, a tin horn was sounded, and the train with its five passenger-coaches started off. The outside passengers had no awning or roof to protect them, and as the sparks and smoke were blown back they began to fear for their combustible straw hats and summer garments; but no accident happened. The passengers had hardly had time to adjust their high beavers and settle themselves after the shock of starting, which had been with such a jerk that they had been knocked into each other and against the low roof, when the train stopped abruptly at the first water station on the road. Here a halt was made and an experiment tried to avoid these unpleasant jerks. The links in the couplings of the cars were stretched to their utmost length, and rails, borrowed unceremoniously from a neighboring fence, were bound to these couplings, one between each pair of cars, to hold the coaches steady. This arrangement worked well, and in a short time the train pulled into Schenectady, where thousands of people were lined up to await its coming. As in the case of the canal and the turnpike, small sections of the railroad were built first, and finally joined into one long highway. Eight short lines were built in New York along the line of the road to Lake Erie and were put in operation at different times. These lines were owned in 1842 by eleven companies. The tendency to consolidation reduced the number to seven by 1850, and then the great era of concentration brought them all under the New York Central management. From the leaf-strewn path for the moccasined Indian the road of our story has become a part of a system of seventy thousand miles of highway which replace the turnpikes in connecting the towns of New York State. Its turbulent streams have become the feeders for a great artificial waterway, and an iron-railed road-bed stretches along its route, over which flies a limited train at the rate of seventy miles an hour. The lumbering stage-wagon has given way to the smooth-running drawing-room car. The rivers and swamps are spanned by fine bridges. The story of the road has been one of swift change and rapid advance. CHAPTER XIX BEFORE AND AFTER THE TURNPIKE