ness and a respect for
general order, for punctuality, for truthfulness, for all placed in
authority."

Do you mark that sentence, reader? The spirit of the Saxon race speaks
in those lines. You observe that this author ranks among the virtues "a
respect for all placed in authority." That, of course, may be carried
too far; nevertheless, the strong races, and the worthy men of all
races, do cherish a respect for lawful authority. A good soldier is
_proud_ to salute his officer.

On some English railroads both engineers and engines are put to tests
much severer than upon roads elsewhere. Between Holyhead and Chester, a
distance of ninety-seven miles, the express trains run without stopping,
and they do this with so little strain that an engine performed the duty
every day for several years. A day's work of some crack engineers is to
run from London to Crewe and back again in ten hours, a distance of
three hundred and thirty miles, stopping only at Rugby for three minutes
on each trip. There are men who perform this service every working day
the whole year through, without a single delay. This is a very great
achievement, and can only be done by engineers of the greatest skill and
steadiness. It was long, indeed, before any man could do it, and even
now there are engineers who dare not take the risk. On the Hudson River
road some of the trains run from New York to Poughkeepsie, eighty miles,
without stopping, but not every engineer could do it at first, and very
often a train stopped at Peekskill to take in water. The water is the
difficulty, and the good engineer is one who wastes no water and no
coal.

Mr. Reynolds enumerates all the causes of accidents from the engine,
many of which cannot be understood by the uninitiated. As we read them
over, and see in how many ways an engine can go wrong, we wonder that a
train ever arrives at its journey's end in safety. At the conclusion of
this formidable list, the author confesses that it is incomplete, and
notifies young engineers that _nobody_ can teach them the innermost
secrets of the engine. Some of these, he remarks, require "years of
study," and even then they remain in some degree mysterious.
Nevertheless, he holds out to ambition the possibility of final success,
and calls upon young men to concentrate all their energies upon the
work.

"Self-reliance," he says, "is a grand element of character: it has won
Olympic crowns and Isthmian laurels; it confers kinship wi