ins, the Indians, or the seas--people are
so apt to see only the everyday side of life anyway, and to draw all
their romance and heroics from books.

I helped make a hero once--no, I didn't either; I helped make the
golden setting after the rough diamond had shown its value.

Miles Diston pulled freight on our road a few years ago. He was of
medium stature, dark complexion, but no beauty. He was a manly-looking
fellow, well-educated enough, sober, and a steady-going, reliable
engineer; you would never pick him out for a hero. Miles was young
yet--not thirty--but, somehow or other, he had escaped matrimony: I
guess he had never had time. He stayed on the farm at home until he was
of age, and then went firing, so that when I first knew him he had
barely got to his goal--the throttle.

A good many men, when they first get there, take great interest in their
work for a few months--until experience gives them confidence; then they
take it easier, look around, and take some interest in other things.
Most of them never hope to get above running, and so sit down more or
less contented, get married, buy real estate, gamble, or grow fat, each
according to the dictates of his own conscience or the inclinations of
his make-up. Miles figured a little on matrimony.

I can't explain it; but when a railroad man is in trouble, he comes to
me for advice, just as he would go to the company doctor for kidney
complaint. I am a specialist in heart troubles. Miles came to me.

Miles was like the rest of them. They don't come right down and say,
"Something's the matter with me; what would you do for it?" No, sir!
They hem and haw, and laugh off the symptoms, until you come right out
and tell them just how they feel and explain the cause; then they will
do anything you say. Miles hemmed and hawed a little, but soon came out
and showed his symptoms--he asked me if I had ever noticed the
"Frenchman's" girl.

"The Frenchman," be it known, was our boss bridge carpenter. He lived at
a small place half-way over my division--I was pulling express--and the
freights stopped there, changing engines. I knew Venot, the bridge
carpenter, very well; met him in lodge occasionally, and once in a
while he rode on the engine with me to inspect bridges. His wife was a
Canadian woman, and good-looking for her forty years and ten children.
The daughter that was killing Miles Diston, Marie Venot, was the eldest,
and had just graduated from some sisters' school