The Road Builders

The S. & W. was hoping some day to build a large station with a steel and glass trainshed at Sherman. Indeed a side elevation of the structure drawn to scale and framed in black walnut had hung for a number of years in the private office away down east of President Daniel De Reamer. But that was to come in the day when Sherman should be a metropolis; at present the steel of which it was to be constructed still lay deep in the earth unblasted unsmelted and unconverted; and the long very dirty train which at the time this narrative opens was waiting to begin its westward journey lay exposed to the rays of what promised to be by noon the hottest sun the spring had so far known. The cars were of an old ill-ventilated sort and the laborers who were packed within them like cattle in a box-car had shed coats and even shirts and now sat back and gasped and grumbled and fanned themselves with their caps and steadily lost interest in life.. Apparently there was some uncertainty back in the office of the superintendent. A red-faced man with a handkerchief around his neck ran out with an order; whereupon an engine backed in coupled up to the first car and whistled impatiently. But they did not go. Half an hour passed and the red-faced man ran out again and the engine uncoupled snorted rang its bell and disappeared whence it had come.