More Toasts Part 171

"The newspapers and th' legislatures."

An old Cornish woman who had never before traveled by rail went to a country station to catch a train. She sat herself down on a seat in the station, and after sitting there for about two hours, the station-master came up to her and asked where she was going. On her telling him, he said:

"Why, my good woman, the train has just gone, and there isn't another for a long time!"

"Why, lor'!" says the old lady, "I thought the whole consarn moved!"

"What good," asked the angry would-be pa.s.senger, "are the figures set down in these railway time-tables?"

"Why," patiently explained the genial agent, "if it weren't for them figures we'd have no way of findin' out how late the train is."

The American in the first-cla.s.s carriage of an English train insisted on smoking. An angry Englishman protested, and when about to appeal to the guard the American got ahead of him with the remark: "Guard, I think you will find that that gentleman is traveling with a third-cla.s.s ticket on him."

It proved to be true, and the sputtering Britisher was put out.

A spectator of the incident asked the American how he knew about the ticket.

"Well," explained the composed stranger, "it was sticking out of his pocket and I noticed that it was the same color as mine."

A new railroad through Louisiana strikes some of the towns about a mile from the business center, so it is necessary to run a bus line.

A salesman stopping in one of the towns asked the old darky bus driver about it:

"Say, uncle, why have they got the depot way down here?"

After a moment's hesitation the old darky replied: "Ah dunno, boss, unless dey wanted to git it on de railroad."

Picking her way daintily through the locomotive plant, a young woman visitor viewed the huge operations with awe. Finally, she turned to a young man who was showing her through, and asked:

"What is that big thing over there?"

"That's a locomotive-boiler," he replied. She puckered her brows.

"And what do they boil locomotives for?"

"To make the locomotive tender," and the young man from the office never smiled.

"What kind of a plant is the Virginia creeper?"

"It isn't a plant; it's a railroad."

The president of a certain railway in Kentucky which is only ten miles long, was exchanging annual pa.s.ses one year with officials of other railways.

He enclosed an annual pa.s.s on his railway to Stuyvesant Fish, then president of the Illinois Central Railway, for himself and family, with the request that Fish reciprocate.

It seems that Fish had never heard of the Kentucky road, so he instructed his secretary to look it up. As a result the pa.s.s was returned with the following curt letter:

DEAR SIR:

I find that your railroad is only ten miles long, while my road is eleven hundred miles long. I herewith return your pa.s.s made out in favor of myself and family. Yours truly, STUYVESANT FISH.

This was too much for the old Kentucky colonel, who made the following notation on Fish's letter and sent it back:

"You go to h.e.l.l--_my railroad is as_ WIDE _as yours_".

He received the Illinois Central pa.s.s by return mail.

"Conductor!" shouted a pa.s.senger on the back-country train.

"That was my station, sir! Why didn't you stop?"

"We don't stop there any longer," said the conductor. "You see, the engineer is mad with the station agent!"

"Now will this train reach its destination on time?"

"We hope so, but we don't guarantee it."

"You mean you sell me a ticket to get to a certain place by a certain time and then you give me no a.s.surance I'll be there at that time?"

"That's about it."

"Well, I'll take the ticket. But I'll get even! I won't guarantee I'll be here when your darned old unguaranteed train is ready to start, so I won't!"

"We are twenty minutes late," remarked the pa.s.senger. "Will we make it up before we reach New York?"

"No, sah; no, sah," answered the porter. "No, sah. The engineer and fireman get time and a half for overtime."

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