eeds love, the boy who didn't pass.

The Station-Master's Story

Yes, it's a quiet station, but it suits me well enough;
I want a bit of the smooth now, for I've had my share o' rough.
This berth that the company gave me, they gave as the work was light;
I was never fit for the signals after one awful night,
I'd been in the box from a younker, and I'd never felt the strain
Of the lives at my right hand's mercy in every passing train.
One day there was something happened, and it made my nerves go queer,
And it's all through that as you find me the station-master here.

I was on at the box down yonder--that's where we turn the mails,
And specials, and fast expresses, on to the center rails;
The side's for the other traffic--the luggage and local slows.
It was rare hard work at Christmas, when double the traffic grows.
I've been in the box down yonder nigh sixteen hours a day,
Till my eyes grew dim and heavy, and my thoughts went all astray;
But I've worked the points half-sleeping--and once I slept outright,
Till the roar of the Limited woke me, and I nearly died with fright.

Then I thought of the lives in peril, and what might have been their fate
Had I sprung to the points that evening a tenth of a tick too late;
And a cold and ghastly shiver ran icily through my frame
As I fancied the public clamor, the trial, and bitter shame.
I could see the bloody wreckage--I could see the mangled slain--
And the picture was seared for ever, blood-red, on my heated brain.
That moment my nerve was shattered, for I couldn't shut out the thought
Of the lives I held in my keeping, and the ruin that might be wrought.

That night in our little cottage, as I kissed our sleeping child,
My wife looked up from her sewing, and told me, as she smiled,
That Johnny had made his mind up--he'd be a pointsman, too.
"He says when he's big, like daddy, he'll work in the box with you."
I frowned, for my heart was heavy, and my wife she saw the look;
Lord bless you! my little Alice could read me like a book.
I'd to tell her of what had happened, and I said that I must leave,
For a pointsman's arm ain't trusty when terror lurks in his sleeve.

But she cheered me up in a minute, and that night, ere we went to sleep,
She made me give her a promise, which I swore that I'd always keep--
It was always to do my duty. "Do that, and then, come what will,
You'll have no worry." said Alice, "if things go well or ill.
There's something that always t