'"
AN ENGINEER'S CHRISTMAS STORY
In the summer, fall, and early winter of 1863, I was tossing chips into
an old Hinkley insider up in New England, for an engineer by the name of
James Dillon. Dillon was considered as good a man as there was on the
road: careful, yet fearless, kindhearted, yet impulsive, a man whose
friends would fight for him and whose enemies hated him right royally.
Dillon took a great notion to me, and I loved him as a father; the fact
of the matter is, he was more of a father to me than I had at home, for
my father refused to be comforted when I took to railroading, and I
could not see him more than two or three times a year at the most--so
when I wanted advice I went to Jim.
I was a young fellow then, and being without a home at either end of the
run, was likely to drop into pitfalls. Dillon saw this long before I
did. Before I had been with him three months, he told me one day, coming
in, that it was against his principles to teach locomotive-running to a
young man who was likely to turn out a drunkard or gambler and disgrace
the profession, and he added that I had better pack up my duds and come
up to his house and let "mother" take care of me--and I went.
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