The Railroad

By Gail Hamilton ^[1]

Annotations by Kristina Bowers

It was a wild story that came to Trip’s ears, and no wonder she was frightened out of what few little wits she had. For as she came around the rock a whole troop of her schoolmates sprang up to meet her, and one cried one thing, and one another, but the burden of their song seemed to be, “The railroad! the railroad! O, have you heard?”

“Yes,” said little Trip, unconcernedly; “I know there is a railroad going to run in Applethorpe.”

“O, but that’s nothing! It’s going to run right through your house!” exclaimed Olive. 

“Right through your front door!” added Martha.

“Now I don’t believe that,” replied Trip. “A railroad can’t get through a door.”

“Why, of course,” said Olive, “they’ll take the door out; they’ll pull the house down. A railroad is too big,–it’s as big as a meeting-house.”^[2] Olive had very hazy notions about railroads, never having seen one. 

“I don’t believe there’s going to be any railroad,” meditated Trip, after a pause, choosing what seemed the quickest and surest way of saving the front door. 

“O, yes there is! I heard my father,– why, my father knows all about it. It’s coming now.”

“And, Trip, if I was you,” said Olive, in a low, impressive voice, “I wouldn’t stay at school to-day. I would go straight home and put my boxes and things together so’s to save them. I expect they’ll tear the house down right away. I shouldn’t wonder if they had it all teared down by the time you get home.” 

Now was Trip’s heart in a flutter all day, though she resolutely refused to go home. She even persisted in her professed doubt as to whether there was going to be any railroad at all; but in the depths of her quaking heart she saw already the dear old house torn quite away, and herself and all the family forced to rove homeless over the world. So it is no wonder she was a little absent-minded that day, and missed two words in spelling, for which she cried vigorously all noon-time, with a little under-wail for the lost house. 

But as she came down the lane at night, behold! there was the house as whole as ever,–that was one comfort. No wandering about in the darkness to-night, at least. And there, too, was Jack turning summersets^[3] under the Balm-of-Gilead^[4] tree, and Lilo frisking about frantically, as if no ruin impended. So Trip plucked up heart a little, and asked Jack what it was all about, and “Is the railroad going to tear our house all down, Jack Straws?”

Jack Straws, thus appealed to, left standing on his head, and tried his feet by way of variety, thrusting both fists under her chin, one after the other, as an appropriate way of saying, “No, Trip-up. I wish ‘t was.”

“Well, there,” sighed Trip, greatly relieved; “I knew ‘t was n’t. But Olive and all the girls said the railroad was coming, and I must pack up my clothes.” 

“But ‘t is coming, so pack away.”

“Why, what?–when?–where are we going?”

“Well, how should you like the barn, say? The hay is soft, and we should be handy to milk; and then there are the horned oxen to do the dairy-work.”

But seeing Trip’s dismayed face, he repented himself. “No, Trip, the line was laid out, and it ran right through our front door. That’s a fact now. I saw the stake driven down right before the front door. But father went to see them, and told them, besides moving the house, it would cut the farm in two halves, sir, and make trouble; and what do you think they’ve done, sir?” Here Jack interposed a summerset by way of taking breath. 

“Stopped the railroad, I guess,” said Trip, breathlessly.

“No, sir. Whisked it off one side, and are going slam-bang through the peach-trees. We’ve saved the house, but we’ve lost the garden. All the currant-bushes are making farewell visits, and the hop-toads are breaking up housekeeping.”

“Jack,” said Trip, solemnly, “do you care?”

“Care? No! I’m gladder’n ever I was before since I was born, and don’t remember anything.”

“So am I. I shouldn’t like to live in the barn, but I should like to have the railroad run through the garden.”

But the older people were not all glad. The dear old trees had to come down, and their dear old roots to come up. The dear old pinks that had bloomed for unremembered years left their last sweetness in the soil. All the robins’ nests were rifted,^[5] and the robins did not know what to make of it. Kitty Clover came out to refresh herself with a roll in the catnip, and there was no catnip there. Prince Hum came down to dip his dainty beak into the humming-bird balm, and saw only a gang of rough men digging away with all their might and main.^[6] As for Trip, she sat on a stone, and watched and wondered. When they told her the road must be levelled, she thought a man would come with a great scythe, and slice off the hills like a loaf of brown-bread, and lay the slices in the hollows,–which was not strange, seeing it was only a little while since she had learned that, when people bought land, they did not take it up and carry it home. But after a while the railroad was completed. The hill had been dug out, the sleepers^[7] placed, the rails fastened, the road fenced, and the first train was to run through. Jack put on his Sunday jacket, and went with his father to the brown old house that served for a station. Gerty had made a food fight to accompany them, but it was not thought best. “Cars is no place for girls,” had lordly Jack declaimed, sleeking down his elf locks before his looking-glass, and rioting in his pride of sex.

“I should like to know, did n’t Aunt Jenny way ‘t was just as nice as a parlor, and did n’t Aunty Jenny go in the cars?” asked Gerty, decisively. 

“Now I’m ready,” said Jack, rather abruptly, but very wisely, changing the subject.

“And I think there won’t be many will look nicer,” said little Trip, admiringly, drawing her tiny fingers over the velvet jacket.

“Now you mind,” said Jack, who would miss the keenness of his triumph if his sisters should not witness it; “you go and sit on the rock out there, and see me when I go by.”

“Yes,” said Gerty, forgetting her momentary dissatisfaction, “we will.”

“And don’t you go straying away, because they’ll come so fast, if you’re not there, you can’t get back before they’ll be all gone, and then you won’t see me. I shall whiz by just like a flash.”

“O,” said Trip, “I shall look just as tight!” And so she did; for though from their rock by the well they could see miles of railroad in each direction, she scarcely dared turn her head for fear in that moment the wonderful train should flash by, and she not see it. But after a half-hour’s waiting, a black speck appeared at the end of the long line; it grew bigger and bigger; all the family came out to see it; volumes of smoke rose and rolled backwards from it; there was a rattle and a roar and a din. Gerty and Trip instinctively shrunk back, but it had already passed them; and there, on the platform of the last car, stood Jack, holding on by the door, bowing and smiling, and proud as Lucifer.

O, what a grand and glorious thing it was to be a boy, and ride in that wonderful train! and what a comparatively tame and humiliating thing it was to be a girl, and just sit on a rock and see him go by!^[8]

So the railroad was finished, and the grown-up people found it was not so bad after all; for the cars passed through a “cut” so deep that the engine smoke-stack hardly reached the top, and you only knew they were there by the sound. “And if the well does not cave in,” said Trip’s father, “we shall be as good as new.” And the well never did cave in, though it stood on the very edge of the cut. The garden trotted over to the other side of the house, and did not mind it at all. The currants and the raspberries and the blackberries held their own, and some fine new peach-trees more than made good the loss of the old. “Besides,” said Jack, who had been continually prowling along the railroad ever since the first surveyors appeared, and who doubtless knew more about it than any of the directors, “what do you think? There are blackberries no end along the track. It’s my opinion the engine sows ’em.” “And there are strange flowers that I never saw here anywhere before,” added Gerty. There was also a continual running to see the swiftly-passing trains. A dozen times a day the sweet farm-silence was broken in upon by its roar and rush, and so many times wildly sped all the little feet over the velvet turf to the well, to gaze at the ever-charming sight. Lillo caught the fever, and carried it to extremes. “Cars!” rung through the house at the approach of every train, and at the cry out leaped Lillo, past the well and down the bank, barking furiously, and tearing along beside the train till it emerged from the cut, when he would return, wagging his tail, and looking up into the children’s faces as proud and happy as if he had done some great thing. What he evidently meant was, “You make great talk about your swift cars, but you see I am not afraid of them. I can keep up with them, yes, and chase them away.” Indeed, he was so on the alert that at any time Jack had only to say, “Cars, Lillo!” and away Lillo would rush pell-mell to the opening by the well, and execute several fine barks and great leaps before he would discover that he had been imposed upon.

The poultry about the farm did not take things so bravely as Lillo. The little yellow, downy goslings, which are the loveliest, sweetest things you ever saw, only they will grow up into geese in such a hurry; and the white little chickens, almost as soft and pretty; and the poor little slender-legged turkeys, that are not pretty at all, and have much ado to keep their feeble breath in their feeble bodies, – waddled and scampered and tottered over the grass, and never took a thought of the railroad; but after they became respectable fowls, and went on their travels in the neighboring pastures, dangers began to thicken. “It’s car-time. Run, Jack, run, Gerty, and see where the chickens are!” More than once all precautions were in vain. The heavy train thundered on into the very midst of the flocks. The chickens, surprised, took to their wings and escapes; but the dainty turkeys tiptoed along, wild with fright, yet loath to leave their dignity and run, and — let me not sadden your young hearts with tidings of catastrophe, but simply say that for a week thereafter Jack and Gerty and Trip had Thanksgiving dinners. One morning Jack rushed up to the open window, crying, “Mother Goose is on the track, and the down-train is coming!” Mother Goose was an old gray goose that had been kept in the family a long time in consideration of past services. Great-great-great-very-great-grandchildren had been hatched and hatcheted, and still Mother Goose waddled her serene way over the farm, and bathed herself in the brook, and grandmothered the successive broods without fear or favor. They all rushed out to the railroad side. Yes, her hour was surely come at last. There she sat between the rails, calmly surveying these new-fangled notions, and wondering, I suppose, what would turn up next by way of improvement, and on came the terrible engine, dragging its terrible train, ignorant of Mother Goose and her meditations. Nonsense! What can a smart young engine, however energetic, do against a sensible old goose, with all her wits about her? Mother Goose was not going to be put down by that upstart, not she! She just sat still, bobbed her head a little as each car came up, and bade them all defiance. When the train had passed over her, she remained quiet a moment to show that she was not nervous, then arose, shook herself, and looked over her shoulder as who should say, “Seems to me I heard something” quietly stepped upon the rail, flopped down on the outside, and waddled off with a placid but profound contempt for all such flummery. You may be sure she had a royal dinner that day, and I make no doubt added a very sarcastic chapter to her Memoirs of my Life and Times before she went to bed at night. 

But so many curious and remarkable things happened at the farm-house in consequence of that railroad, that I have not now room to tell them. If you care to know them, however, I will tell you more another time.

Hamilton, Gail. “The Railroad.” Our Young Folks: An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls; 1, No. 5 (May 1865): 306-310.