Homeburg Memories | Page 4

beg him not to miss the morning train back, as we do three times a week; but he simply has to go to Jonesville that often, and we all know why, and he knows we know. The Parsons are rid of their Aunt Mary at last. She's worse than an oyster. Put her in a guest-room and she grows fast to it. They've had her for six months now. Hello! Peter Link's son is going down to Jonesville. Guess he's got his job back. Andy would be a good boy if he would only stop trying to make the distilleries work nights. There goes old Colonel Ackley on his weekly trip. Wonder if he thinks he fools any one with that suit case. Ever since the town went dry, he's had business in the next county. Hello, Colonel! Don't drop that case. You'll break a suit of clothes! Watch him glare.
The engine has gotten its breath by this time. Ever notice how human an engine sounds when it stops after a long run and the air-brake apparatus begins to pant? Old Ball has been fussing for a minute and now he yells "'Board." Aunt Emma Newcomb gets in a few more kisses all around her family. She's going down to the next station. The engine gives a few loud puffs, spins its wheels a few times, and the cars begin moving past. Hurrah! Something doing to-day. That grocery salesman who gets here once a week is coming across the square two jumps to a rod. Go it, old man! Go it, train! Ball will always stop for a woman, but the drummers have to take her on the fly. There! He's on--all but his hat. Red Nolan will keep that for him till his next trip.
She's moving fast now. The brakeman hops the next to the last car with grace and carelessness. From every platform devoted friends and relatives are spilling--it is a point of honor in Homeburg to remain with your loved ones in the car as long as you dare before leaping for life. The last car sweeps by. The red and green lights begin to grow smaller with businesslike promptness. There is a parting clatter as the train hits the last switch frog two blocks away. Then it's over. The noise, bustle, confusion, and joyful excitement follow the flying cinders out of town, and silence resumes its reign. I've never heard anything so still as Homeburg after the 4:11 has pulled out.
But we're too busy to notice it as we string across the square to the post-office. We have the day's cargo to digest. We have to wait for the evening mail to be distributed, read the evening newspapers, shake hands with all the returned Homeburgers, size up the brand new Homeburgers and investigate the strangers. And it keeps us busy until supper time.
I've lived in Homeburg thirty-five years and more, and the 4:11 train has been tangled up in my biography all the way. I remember the first time I ever rode on it. The cars were funny-looking coops then, and the engine had a sixty-gallon smokestack. I was four, and I yelled with fear when the train came in and kept it up for the first twenty miles after they lugged me on board. The conductor chucked me under the chin and gave me his punch to play with. He was a young man then. He'd carried my father and mother on their wedding journey, and twenty years after that first ride of mine he carried me and my wife on our wedding journey. The other day we gave our oldest girl two dollars and sent her on her first trip down to Jonesville, by herself. Old Ball was on the train, and he grinned at me and promised to take good care of her. He's pretty gray now, but I hope he stays long enough to start another generation of our family on its travels.
I went to my first circus, to Jonesville, on old Number Eleven. And I went down there at sixteen, a member of the Republican Club, with a torch, and the proudest boy in the State. The next year I started to college with an algebra and a tennis racket under my arm (they wouldn't jam into the trunk), and a dozen friends came down to see me off. On Number Eleven that day I met four other boys going to the same school. We are still close chums, though one is on the coast, another's here in New York, and the third is in the Philippines.
[Illustration: It seemed to me then as if she must have come from heaven by air-line.]
It was the next year that I noticed a girl as she stepped off of Number Eleven and was met