Miles took his repulse calmly, but it hurt. He told me that Marie was
hunting for a different kind of man from him; said that he thought
perhaps if he would enlist, and go out to fight Sitting Bull, and come
home in a new, brass-bound uniform, with a poisoned arrow sticking out
of his breast, she would fall at his feet and worship him. She told him
she liked him better than any of the town boys; his calling was noble
enough and hard enough; but she failed to see her ideal hero in a man
with blue overclothes on and cinders in his ears. If any of Miles's
competitors had rescued a drowning child, or killed a bear with a
penknife, at this juncture, I'm afraid Marie would have taken him. But,
as I have indicated, it was a dull season for heroes.
About this time our road invested in some mogul passenger engines, and
I drew one. I didn't like the boiler sticking back between me and Dennis
Rafferty. I didn't like six wheels connected. I didn't like a
knuckle-joint in the side rod. I didn't like eighteen-inch cylinders. I
was opposed to solid-end rods. And I am afraid I belonged to a class of
ignorant, short-sighted, bull-headed engineers who didn't believe that a
railroad had any right to buy anything but fifteen by twenty-two
eight-wheelers--the smaller they were the more men they would want.
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