he fact that the trains of
cars were not reduced to kindling wood while the railroad roundhouse and
its twelve locomotives, a little farther down the valley, was taken up
bodily, broken into fragments and its mighty inmates carried like chips
for miles down the valley.

Weary Passengers.

From end to end of the train, upon its arrival at Philadelphia, there
was an aspect of absolute exhaustion, varied in its expression according
to the individual. Phlegmatic men lay upon their backs, across the
seats, with their legs dangling in the aisles. One might send them
spinning round or toss their feet out of the passage, and their worn
faces showed no more sign than if they were lifeless. Women lay swathed
in veils and wraps, sometimes alone, sometimes huddled together, and
sometimes guarded by the arms of their husbands--husbands who themselves
had given way and slept as heavily as if dosed with narcotics.

But here and there is the typical American girl, full of nerve. She is
worn out, too, but sleeps only fitfully, starting up at every sound and
dropping uneasily off again. Now and then one encountered the man and
woman of restless temperament, whose sleepless eyes looked out thinking,
thinking--thinking on the trees and grass and bushes, faintly showing
form now in the gray light of the very earliest dawn.

Childhood's Peaceful Sleep.

In the midst of it all a girl of six or seven, with a light shawl thrown
over her figure, slept as peacefully as if she lay in the comfortable
embrace of her own crib at home. She was little Bertha Reed, who had
been sent out from Chicago in the care of the conductor on a trip to
Brooklyn, where she was to meet her aunt. At Pittsburgh she was taken in
charge by a Miss Harvey, a relative. She was a passenger on the Chicago
limited, the last train to get safely across the bridge at South Fork.
She was a model of patience and cheerfulness through all the discomforts
and drawbacks of the voyage, and her innocent prattle made every man and
woman love her.

It might have been supposed that if one were to waken any of these
sleeping passengers to obtain their names and ask them of the disaster
they might surlily have resented it. But they didn't. Now and then one
of them would half-sleepily hand out his ticket under the mistaken
notion that the reporter was the conductor. Another shake brought them
round and they answered everything as kindly as if the unavoidable
breaking in upon their c