s have brought these
messages, this news of the world, thus far on their journey. Up the
Hudson they have come, and across the Empire State and along the shores
of Lake Michigan, nearly a thousand miles in twenty-four hours, which is
not so bad, although the hottest, maddest rush is yet to come.

It is a fine thing to know the men who drive the engines on these
trains; just to see them is something, and to make them talk (if you can
do it) is better business than interviewing most celebrities you have
heard about.

To this end I set out, one evening early in January, for the great
round-house of the Northwestern road, that lies on the outskirts of
Chicago. A strange place, surely, is this to one who approaches it
unprepared--a place where yellow eyes glare out of deep shadows, where
fire-dragons rush at you with crunchings and snortings, where the air
hisses and roars. It might be some demon menagerie, there in the
darkness.

To this place of fears and pitfalls I came an hour or so before
starting-time, and here I found Dan White, one of the Northwestern
crack-a-jacks, giving the last careful touches to locomotive 908 before
the night's hard run. In almost our first words my heart was won by
something White said. I had mentioned Frank Bullard of the Burlington
road, a rival by all rights, and immediately this bluff,
broad-shouldered man exclaimed: "Ah, he's a fine fellow, Bullard is, and
he knows how to run an engine." White would fight Bullard at the
throttle to any finish, but would speak only good words of him.

"Tell me," said I, "about the great run you made the other night." From
a dozen lips I had heard of White's tremendous dash from Chicago to
Clinton, Iowa.

"Oh, it wasn't much; we had to make the time up, and we did it. Didn't
we, Fred?"

This to the fireman, who nodded in assent, but said nothing.

"You made a record, didn't you?"

"Well, we went one hundred and thirty-eight miles in one hundred and
forty-three minutes; that included three stops and two slow-downs. I
don't know as anybody has beat that--much."

[Illustration: A PLACE WHERE YELLOW EYES GLARE OUT OF DEEP SHADOWS.]

By dint of questioning, I drew from this modest man some details of his
achievement. The curve-bent stretch of seventeen miles between Franklin
Grove and Nelson they did in fourteen minutes, and a part of this,
beyond Nachusa, they took at an eighty-mile pace. They covered five
miles between Clarence and Stanwood in thr