t boys run after and stare at as they would after and at an
elephant. You are snow-bound at Buffalo. The Lake Shore Line is piled with
drifts like a surf. Two passenger trains have been half-buried for twelve
hours somewhere in snowy Chautauqua. The storm howls like a congregation
of Arctic bears. But the superintendent at Buffalo is determined to
release his castaways, and clear the road to Erie. He permits you to be a
passenger on the great snowplow; and there it is, all ready to drive.
Harnessed behind it, is a tandem team of three engines. It does not occur
to you that you are going to ride on a steam drill, and so you get aboard.

It is a spacious and timbered room, with one large bull's eye window,--an
overgrown lens. The thing is a sort of Cyclops. There are ropes, and
chains, and a windlass. There is a bell by which the engineer of the first
engine can signal the plowman, and a cord whereby the plowman can talk
back. There are two sweeps, or arms, worked by machinery, on the sides.
You ask their use, and the superintendent replies, "When, in a violent
shock, there is danger of the monster's upsetting, an arm is put out, on
one side or the other, to keep the thing from turning a complete
somersault." You get one idea, and an inkling of another. So you take out
your Accident Policy for three thousand dollars, and examine it. It never
mentions battles, nor duels, nor snowplows. It names "public conveyances."
Is a snowplow a public conveyance? You are inclined to think it is neither
that nor any other kind that you should trust yourself to, but it is too
late for consideration.

You roll out of Buffalo in the teeth of the wind, and the world is turned
to snow. All goes merrily. The machine strikes little drifts, and they
scurry away in a cloud. The three engines breathe easily; but by and by
the earth seems broken into great billows of dazzling white. The sun comes
out of a cloud, and touches it up till it out-silvers Potosi. Houses lie
in the trough of the sea everywhere, and it requires little imagination to
think they are pitching and tossing before your eyes. A great breaker
rises right in the way. The monster, with you in it, works its way up and
feels of it. It is packed like a ledge of marble. Three whistles! The
machine backs away and keeps backing, as a gymnast runs astern to get sea
room and momentum for a big jump; as a giant swings aloft a heavy sledge,
that it may come down with a heavy blow.

One wh