If you have nothing else to do some day when you are passing through the vast network of tracks of, for example, the great railway running northward out of New York, give a thought to the man who walks them for you, the man on whom your safety, in this particular place, so much depends. He is a peculiar individual. His work is so very exceptional, so very different from your own. While you are sitting in your seat placidly wondering whether you are going to have a pleasant evening at the theatre or whether the business to which you are about to attend will be as profitable as you desire, he is out on the long track over which you are speeding, calmly examining the bolts that hold the shining metals together. Neither rain nor sleet can deter him. The presence of intense heat or intense cold has no effect on his labors. Day after day, at all hours and in all sorts of weather, he may be seen placidly plodding these iron highways, his wrench and sledge crossed over his shoulders, his eyes riveted on the rails, carefully watching to see whether any bolts are loose or any spikes sprung. Upward of two hundred cannon-ball flyers rush by him on what might be called a four-track bowling alley each day, and yet he dodges them all for perhaps as little as any laborer is paid. If he were not watchful, if he did not perform his work carefully and well, if he had a touch of malice or a feeling of vengefulness, he could wreck your train, mangle your body and send you praying and screaming to your Maker. There would be no sure way of detecting him. Death lurks in this tunnel. Here, if anywhere, it may be said to be constantly watching. What with the noise, which is a perfect and continuous uproar, the smoke, which hangs like a thick, gloomy pall over everything, and the weak, ineffective lights which shine out on your near approach like will-o’-the-wisps, the chances of hearing and seeing the approach of any particular train are small. Side arches, or small pockets in the walls, are provided for the protection of the men, but these are not always to be reached in time when a train thunders out of the gloom. If you look sharp you may sometimes see a figure crouching in one of these as you scurry past. He is so close to the grinding wheels that the dust and soot of them are flung into his very soul. And yet for all this the money that is paid these men is beggarly small. The work that they do is not considered exceptionally valuable. Fifteen cents an hour is all that they are paid, and this for ten to twelve hours’ work every day. That their lives are in constant danger is not of any point in the matter. They are supposed to work willingly for this, and they do. Only when one is picked off and his body mangled by a passing train is the grimness of the sacrifice emphasized, and then only for a moment. The space which such accident gets in the public prints is scarcely more than a line.