I Travel by Train | Page 6

engineer in
clean-looking striped overalls was coming back, looking under a bit
more deliberately. Three or four porters had swung down and were
standing back on the turf so that they might see farther alongside.
I swung down and walked forward toward the engineer. Before I came
quite up to him, he stopped, looked back toward the conductor, and
with a single easy lift of his stout arm signaled for him to come on up.
The conductor was there as soon as I was.
"There he is, under the front trucks of that baggage-car," the engineer
said, without being quite able to be wholly matter-of-fact.
The conductor steadied himself by putting one hand against the lower
edge of the car's body which stood high above the road-bed and looked
under. A very black-headed Italian boy of about fourteen lay there limp

and almost completely nude from having been dragged and rolled over
the rough limestone ballast.
"He's not cut up to speak of," the conductor said. "We ought to get him
out of there and be on our way in no time."
From somewhere a representative of the railroad company appeared.
He glanced under. "That's easy. I'll look out for everything. You can
scoot right along."
From somewhere also from the houses on the hillside just above the
right-of-way--a number of dark-eyed children came running to see why
the train had stopped.
"Any of you kids know who that boy was that was walking on the
tracks bringing groceries home from the store?"
A cloud swept the faces of the entire group, as if they thought the boy
had been arrested for something that he should not have done.
"Do you?"
"Yes," the oldest boy in the group said. "It was Fortunato."
"Fortunato? Your brother?"
"No, just myfriend."
"Well, he was walking on the tracks, and the train killed him."
In terror and helplessness the boy looked about at the rest of us as if we
ought not to be there, twisted slowly away without moving his feet,
lifted his hands to his face and then sank to the earth sobbing, "Oh,
Fortunato!"
The other children stood speechless, except one boy who said half to
the rest, half to the conductor, "The train was running on the wrong
track."

"Yes, I know it was. But you see, he shouldn't have been walking on
either track. He should have walked in the road."
"But there are automobiles."
I wandered back along the train. As I passed the dining-car it was still
crowded with people who were obliviously enjoying their breakfasts
and the bright morning.
I swung onto the train and walked all the way back to the
observation-car.
There was only one person back there a stout woman all freshly made
up for the day, who was busy with a story in the Delineator.
She glanced up. "Can you tell me why this train is standing so long?"
she asked. "We don't seem to be in any town."
"Oh," I replied, "we killed an Italian boy up ahead."
"Why, how perfectly terrible!" she said in a voice so well modulated
that she might have been reading from the story.
The train gave a little shrug of a lurch forward. "But I guess we must be
going now."
Passengers began to come in from breakfast. Soon they had filled all
the comfortable chairs. For two hours I sat with my back to the window
and read. Periodically I let the book drop to the arm of the chair and
looked out at the windows on the other side of the car past the heads of
the solid row of those who sat across the aisle and did their own
reading or smoked as if for once it would do no good to be impatient.
Groves of maples, numerous in the hills and on the flat land alike, were
splashed with fire. Occasionally some tree was solid yellow. Why had
nobody ever said anything about the beauty of the hills between
Coshocton, Ohio or Athens and St. Louis? Only Brown County,
Indiana, has received any part of the praise due the entire region. And
Brown County became known chiefly because a group of painters

found it paradise when the genteel population of neighboring cities
laughed at it because it was short on railroads and plumbing.
Within the train, too, a change had taken place since yesterday. Most of
the New Englanders had gone on to Washington if they had not taken a
boat at New York and the transcontinental passengers had already been
outnumbered by energetic Buckeyes, who are always going somewhere,
and who are not troubled in the least by getting up and taking a train at
five or five-thirty in the morning. They sat wherever there was room,
smoked cigars, talked pleasantly with some