All the oldtime rage and rivalry between Utica and Rome as to which should be the recognized gateway broke out anew. The jealousies of thirty and forty years before were renewed. Even Herkimer joined the squabble, pushing forward the narrow-gauge line that had been built from her limits north to the little village of Newport and Poland some years before. Finally talk led to promises. Subscription papers were passed. Rome trotted out the terminal grounds and the right-of-way for the Black River & Utica Railroad that had passed her by there before the beginnings of the sixties. Utica met her offers. Yet it seemed as if Rome was to be chosen. The congestion of the New York Central yards in Utica--it was, of course, well before the days of the Barge Canal and the straightening of the Mohawk--made Rome the most practical terminal. Railroad meetings were again the order of the day throughout the North Country. Carthage vied with Gouverneur and even Cape Vincent, stung to the quick by the neglect of her port by the Parsons' management, joined in the clamor. And Watertown? Watertown was beside herself with enthusiasm. She saw herself as the future railroad capital of the state. Corbin and his local backers were not slow to take advantage of the situation. Adroitly they urged that while the Mohawk & St. Lawrence would approach the city from the southeast and the upper Black River valley, the Camden, Watertown & Northern would reach it from the southwest. They even hinted at the possibilities of a union station. Perhaps, the union station would be big enough to take in a recreant but reformed R. W. & O. And some one hinted that the Canadian Pacific by a series of wondrous bridges was to build into the town from Kingston and the northwest. In the union station of Watertown of a decade hence one was to be able to go in through limited trains-de-luxe to almost any quarter of the land. And this in a town which up to that day, at least, had never seen a dining-car come into its ancient station. All that winter Watertown ate railroads, slept railroads, dreamed railroads. Surveyors went across back lots and put funny little yellow wooden stakes in the snow drifts, where there had been potato rows the previous summer and the next might see the beginnings of a great railroad yard. Soft-voiced and persuasive young men went before the Common Council and had all manner of permissive ordinances passed without a single word of protest. Plans and routes by the dozen were filed with the County Clerk. A local poetess burst into song in the _Times_ in commemoration of the spirit of the hour. * * * * *