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THE ROYAL ROAD TO NEW YORK.

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was that the car wasn't to be side tracked in New York for my personal patronage.

The lights of the swift passing towns bespoke the passage through thickly-settled New Jersey, and a few minutes later the distant lights of the great metropolis appeared; then across the two-mile bridge over Newark Bay, with the black hulls of various shipping lying sullen in the rippling water, with only their signal lamps showing, and Communipaw, the old Dutch settlement, better known now as Jersey City, was reached at exactly 7.48 P. M.

BUFFET SMOKER.

DINING CAR.

The most impressive sight in America is the sky-line of New York City, from the water, whether it be day or night. At night it is awesome. The millions of lights, the high black buildings, the halo above, are wonderful.

With a last glance down the Hudson at the distant lamp in the hand of the Statue of Liberty, as the ferry boat approached the slip at Liberty Street, my thoughts leaped to France, who were then mourning the death of the great Bartholdi, who had passed beyond. The boat landed. The clock was striking eight.

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SOME EARLY RAILROAD HISTORY.

WHEN THE STATE FOUGHT THE RAILROADS.

BY COL. A. K. M'CLURE IN THE PITTSBURG GAZETTE.

HE administration of Gov. Shunk, marked the advent and mastery of the steam railway in transportation. The question of constructing railways was earnestly agitated in Pennsylvania some years before the locomotive had been developed, and when the railway line was expected to be merely a tram road with cars to be drawn by horses.

John Stevens, of New York, a man of broad, progressive ideas, who was abreast with Fulton in the development of the steamboat, was the man who first urged the construction of railways. His steamboat, the Phoenix, that ran on the Delaware and Connecticut rivers, was brought to the Delaware by sea, and was the first steamboat to brave the waves of the ocean. As early as 1812 he publicly advocated the theory of carriage by rail, and predicted the practicability of using steam. He appealed to his own state of New York, but was turned down as a pestiferous crank, just as Prof. Morse was when he first went to congress for aid to construct a telegraph line.

In 1823, after having been repelled in several other states, Mr. Stevens, then at the advanced age of 74 years, made a personal appeal to the Pennsylvania legislature to construct a railway from Philadelphia to Columbia. He named such men as Stephen Girard, Horace Binney and John Conley of this city, with Amos Ellmaker of Lancaster, among his incorporators, and Conley was made president of the company. The franchise was given for the period of 50 years, and preliminary surveys were undertaken, but it is evident that the men named as incorporators were not heartily enlisted in the work, as Stevens was never able to raise the sum of $5,000 to complete a mile of the road.

Another charter was granted by the same legislature for the Columbia, Lancaster & Philadelphia Railroad, but no attempt was ever made to vitalize the enterprise.

The necessity for a railway from Philadelphia to connect with the canal at Columbia became more generally appreciated each year, and as all individual and corporate

efforts had failed, the board of canal commissioners ordered a series of preliminary surveys, and the legislature of 1828 authorized the construction of the road from Philadelphia through Lancaster to Columbia by the state.

It was not a popular measure throughout the commonwealth, as the great mass of the people believed that the investment of state money in railways was little less than extravagant waste, and the appropriations were very grudgingly made for the construction of the road, and it was not until April, 1834, that a single track was completed between Philadelphia and Columbia.

The locomotive had just made its appearance and the first train that passed over the new line from Columbia to Philadelphia on the 16th day of April, 1834, had secured a locomotive known as Black Hawk, then regarded as the finest engine that had been constructed. They did not venture to make the entire trip in one day, but on the 15th the run was made from Columbia to Lancaster, where the party rested overnight. On the morning of the 16th the train left Lancaster at 8 o'clock and arrived at the head of the Schuylkill incline plane at 5:30, making the trip from Lancaster to Philadelphia in eight hours and a half.

So little confidence had the managers in the endurance of the locomotive that an empty horse car followed the locomotive train with relays of horses at different points to rescue the party in case the locomotive gave out. They had much difficulty with the locomotive and at times the passengers had to get out and give a healthy push to aid it in starting.

It is difficult for our people in this progressive age to understand the desperate resistance made by the people generally throughout the state to the introduction of railroads. When Pennsylvania at an early day had given liberal assistance to the construction of turnpikes, making continuous lines from Baltimore and Philadelphia to Pittsburg, it was accepted that our commonwealth was in the very front of progress

SOME EARLY RAILROAD HISTORY.

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Every few miles along our through turnpikes was found the wagon tavern. There was one or more in every village and wellto-do farmers whose homes were on the turnpikes ran the wagon tavern as a side industry. All of them had very capacious yards about the barn to accommodate the teams during the night. Excepting in extremely inclement weather the horses always stood out securely attached to their wagons. Hay and oats were furnished for the horses at very moderate prices and the driver could obtain a "snack" or cold lunch in the evening, a bed, hot breakfast and an evening and morning drink of whisky for 25 cents.

The proprietors of the wagon taverns were generally men of influence in the community and when the proposition to construct railways was seriously urged the wagon drivers and wagon tavern keepers made a most aggressive battle.

Mass meetings were held along the lines of the turnpikes to protest against the introduction of railways, which were declared to be of doubtful utility and which could be successful only by the destruction of one of the important industrial interests of the state, that had immense sums of money invested and which would certainly be destroyed.

Political orators, always ready to cater to popular prejudice, delivered most fervent harrangues against the proposed injustice of bringing ruin to the great industrial interests which centered in wagon transportation. In some instances senators and representatives were elected soley on that issue.

Fortunately the progress of the railroad was so gradual that there was no violent destruction of the wagon transportation interests and the grand old Conestoga wagon, with its team of six magnificent horses, usually elegantly caparisoned, gradually perished in Pennsylvania.

As early as 1829 the public-spirited business men of Baltimore appeared before the Pennsylvania Legislature and asked for a

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charter for a road from Baltimore to the Susquehanna river, thence to the borough to Carlisle in the Cumberland Valley. The committee of the senate reported that it would be against sound public policy to grant the franchise, and the measure failed. The chief reason given for excluding the Baltimore Railroad was that the board of canal commissioners had authorized a survey for a road from Harrisburg to Chambersburg and thence by way of Gettysburg to York, and in 1831 an act was passed for the incorporation of the Cumberland Valley Railroad Company.

The

The progress of the work was very slow, and the franchise was forfeited for want of subscriptions to the stock, but the legislature extended the time, and on the 2d of June, 1835, sufficient stock had been subscribed to warrant the governor in issuing letters patent creating the company. bill rechartering the United States bank as a state institution required the bank to subscribe $100,000 to the capital stock of the company, and Mr. Nicholas Biddle, president of the bank, not only paid the $100,000 subscription, but gave an additional $100,000 to aid the enterprise, but when the bank failed in 1839 the stock of the Cumberland Valley Railroad was hardly worth enumerating among the assets.

The men engaged in the enterprise were confronted time and again with almost insuperable obstacles for want of means, and finally it was completed by a large issue of 25 and 50-cent paper money, then commonly known as "shinplasters. Money was extremely scarce after the financial revulsion of 1837, and the people were willing to receive anything in the similitude of money that had any fair semblance of credit.

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The road was opened with great ceremony from Harrisburg to Carlisle on the 16th of August, 1837; on the 10th of November the same year it was formally opened to Newville and on the 16th of the same month the shrill scream of the iron horse was first heard in Chambersburg, where there was a great military and popular display.

The interest exhibited by the people of Philadelphia and of Baltimore for the creation of railroad facilities in transportation was quickened by the heroic achievement of New York in the completion of the Erie canal in 1825. Until that time Philadelphia was the metropolis of finance, commerce and trade, and possessed the largest

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SOME EARLY RAILROAD HISTORY.

population of any city in the country, but the completion of the great water highways from Lake Erie to the sea gave an advantage to New York that steadily drained Philadelphia of her money and commerce, and the decline of Philadelphia was greatly hastened by Jackson's withdrawal of $8,000,000 of government deposits from the United States bank, by the financial crisis of 1837, and by the later failure of the great banking institution.

Strange as it may seem, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, then completed from Baltimore to Cumberland, was in advance of the people of Philadelphia in pressing for an allrail line from the eastern coast to the waters of the Ohio at Pittsburg, and the first bill providing for the incorporation of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, proposing to construct a line from Harrisburg to Pittsburg, was prepared and presented to the legislature without the knowledge of the Philadelphia business men. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad had obtained from the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1845 a franchise for the extension of the road from Cumberland to Pittsburg. As there was then no proposition to construct any other railway

line in the state, little opposition was exhibited to the project of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.

The man who first conceived and prepared the bill for the incorporation of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was Capt. Samuel D. Karns. He was jolly and companionable, and one of the most popular of the captains of the packet boats on the canal during the summer season, and in the winter he made his home at Harrisburg, and paid the expenses of what would now be regarded as rather a frugal livelihood, by picking up small fees as a lobbyist. He did not pretend to debauch legislators, but gave such attention to little matters of personal legislation as made parties willing to pay him the small fee he demanded.

When the legislature of 1846 met Philadelphia had become thoroughly aroused to the importance of having a through railway line, and the only through line in the state, from the Atlantic Coast to Pittsburg, and the charter of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was ready when the legislature opened, and a large and powerful lobby of Philadelphia business men on hand to press its passage.

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THERE is a great deal of good in human nature, if we look below the surface of our prejudice for it.

THOSE whose ordinary lives run through the lighted places of the world, are generally slow to lift from the shadows, some follow to share their sunshine.

How often we close our eyes and grope in the darkness of our own stupidity.

IT is cowardly to ourselves and contemptible in the eyes of others to take advantage of an intellectual superiority.

THE muddled mind of ignorance is prone, to measure other ideas with its

own.

THE star of appreciation lights the highway of effort.

REAL manhood stands straight in the line of life's duty, guiding to the right and marking time in preparation for the march of purpose.

THE heart of love finds new life in words of praise, that are breathed from the lips we kiss.

How small the minds whose petty prejudice permits their envy of another's worth to mark the absence of their own.

THE morbid confession of a fault is often cruel and unkind, and is best atoned for by the remorse and sacrifice of silence. BRAIN principle sometimes has to be sacrificed upon the altar of heart sentiment.

POPULARITY is a condition of good fellowship, that lives largely on the cupidity of abandoned generosity.

SAY what you think, and do your best. A failure of experience is often preferable to a success of chance.

MEN of meager intellectual weight, unconsciously bend the knee of recognition to those whom they detest for virtue not their own.

WE all live alone to some extent within the circle of our individual world, and only find the end of ambition there.

ANGER, like wine, places human nature in a false and exaggerated condition, until the re-action of regret brings about its normal level again.

SOME men fail too much to secure anything beyond the patronage of pity, others succeed too well to find more than envy in the world's eyes.

DREAMS and hopes that come into our lives and prove to be but fiction when we wake, add strength to-day, with hope for night and rest, and rob sleep of its fear.

EVERY person we meet, leaves some sort of impression, favorable or unfavorable, that lives with us as long as our memory of that person lasts.

No man ever yet truthfully said that he loved anything beyond his power to control, or without the circle of his own ability.

TO-MORROW.

BY ARTHUR G. LEWIS.

Let the ocean of life be deep as it may,
If the memory of something is sacredly sweet,
For the flower of success is fragrant they say,
Beside the dead leaves of remembered defeat.
If the brook-stream of youth runs clear as before,
When love and ambition widened its shore,

And the pang of regret in our heart is at rest,
We can look for to-morrow and hope for the best.

"STUB ENDS OF THOUGHT," in book form, can be obtained from the author, Mr Arthur G. Lewis, 10 Granby Street, Norfolk, Va., for $1.25, postpaid.

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