happen, every day of the year."

Sure Pop paused to call their attention to some little blurry patches of
blue scattered along the track. "Wild flowers," he said. "Pretty things,
aren't they? If we weren't going so fast, we'd stop and get some."

The engineer scowled. "Pretty? They don't look pretty to me any more.
Look there, now!"

The brakes jarred as he spoke, and the shriek of the whistle scattered a
group ahead. Several young couples, going home from town by way of the
railroad track, had stopped to gather wild flowers. One couple were
walking hand in hand over the railroad bridge, deaf at first to whistle
and bell and everything else. Suddenly they heard, looked up, and turned
first one way and then another, uncertain whether to jump off the bridge
or stand their ground.

"Is it any wonder that I don't like the flower season?" grunted the
engineer in disgust. "It's the worst time of all, seems to me. Now you'd
think those young fellows and girls were old enough and would have sense
enough to keep off the railroad's right of way, wouldn't you? But look
at 'em!"

He mopped his forehead and glared ahead at the frightened couple,
holding the panting engine at a standstill till they could scramble off
the bridge.

"They act as if we had nothing to do but just watch out for 'em," he
went on, getting under way again. "They got off scot-free this time, but
imagine what old Seven-Double-Seven would have done to 'em if this had
been my regular run! Forty miles an hour on schedule--and where would
they be now?

"It's the same old story, day after day--boys riding bicycles down the
tracks, when the road's ten times smoother and a million times as safe!
Boys playing on the turntables and getting crippled for life, one by
one!

"They'll run like mad to get across the track ahead of a fast train--and
then stand and watch it go through! I ought to know--I did it myself
when I was a boy, but little I knew then of the way it wrecks an
engineer's nerves!

"They flip the cars and try to imitate the brakemen without the least
idea of how many thousands of brakemen have lost their lives just that
way. They crawl under cars, instead of waiting or going around. Why,
Colonel, the railroads kill thousands and thousands of people every
year--you know the figures--dozens every day, week in and week out. And
somebody's badly hurt on the railroads every three minutes or less--_and
a third of them are boys and girls and little chil