e commercial line while he was pounding away on
the railroad wire. At the rate those two sounders were going they
sounded to me like the crack of doom and I was becoming powerfully warm.
I finally mustered up courage and answered him.

The first thing the despatcher said was:

"Where in h--l have you been?"

I didn't think that was a very nice thing for him to say, and he fired
it at me so fast I could hardly read it, so I simply replied, "Out
fixing my batteries."

"Well," he said, "your batteries will need fixing when I get through
with you. Now copy 3."

"Copy 3," means to take three copies of the order that is to follow, so
I grabbed my manifold order-book and stylus and prepared to copy. There
is a rule printed in large bold type in all railroad time-cards which
says, "Despatchers, in sending train orders to operators, will
accommodate their speed to the abilities of the operators. In all cases
_they will send plainly and distinctly_." If the despatcher had sent
according to my ability just then he would have sent that order by train
mail. But instead, from the very beginning, he fired it at me so fast,
that before I had started to take it he was away down in the body of it.
I had written down only the order number and date, when I broke and
said, "G. A. To." That made him madder than ever and he went at me again
with increased violence the sounder seeming like the roll of a drum. I
think I broke him about ten times and finally he said, "For heaven's
sake go wake up the day man. You're nothing but a ham." Strangely enough
I could take all of his nasty remarks without any trouble while the
order almost completely stumped me. However, I finally succeeded in
putting it all down, repeated it back to him, and received his "O. K."

When the train arrived the conductor and engineer came in the office and
I gave them the order. The conductor glanced at it for a moment and then
said with a broad grin, "Say, kid, which foot did you use in copying
this?" My copy wasn't very clear, but finally he deciphered it, and they
both signed their names, the despatcher gave me the "complete," and they
left. As soon as the train, which was No. 22, a livestock express, had
departed, I made my O. S. report, and then heaved a big sigh of relief.

Scarcely had the tail-lights disappeared across the bridge and around
the bend, when the despatcher called again and said, "For God's sake
stop that train."

I said, "I can't. She's gone."