"I never did.” "Drina!"

"You deserted me."

"But you threatened to go to town on the first train."

"Now, Bobby, could I have said that? You know I couldn't, and if I had, it would have been your fault, somehow-would it not, Bobby?"

"Of course," I assented, and I knew, looking into her eyes, that whatever had happened, if it were a bad happening, must have been my fault somehow. "Of course," I repeated obediently.

'And you know I wouldn't leave you here to fish all by your poor, dear self— don't you, Bobby?"

"I was a fool, Drina," I cried.

"Now it's all settled, isn't it? I wouldn't quarrel with my best friend; I couldn't; I didn't; and I never shall-never, never." "You are too good, my Drina."

"No, I'm as bad as bad can be, and selfish-my, how selfish! Why, Bobby, I could not bear to be at outs with you, and fish alone, all alone."

"But there you were, fishing for Cupid," I combatted weakly.

"Oh, to be sure I was," she interrupted. "I had almost forgotten Cupid. We caught him together, didn't we? It was just as we would have wished it-two hooks with but a single trout."

"Drina, thou hast not changed." We laughed together. The tempest of the day was gone, and I knew that I should never again make bold to recall those particular clouds, or any new ones, if I could help it. With heads close to one another, we leaned over the net and extricated our trout.

"Ah, Cupid," Drina whispered, “I fear we shall not see your like again."

"Three pounds, at least," I remarked again, this time to an interested listener. "At least," came the echo, and she lifted the big fish.

While she held him, I extracted my Cricket from his jaw and began to reel in my line, pretending to forget that her fly was still to be released. Out of the side of one eye I saw her look at the trout, then at me, and finally she made an unwilling motion to loosen the embedded hook; but when it did not yield to the first gentle pull, she dropped the fish, shuddering.

"You forbade me, five minutes ago." "Nonsense-I did not."

"Perhaps you did not ask me to free that fly, either?" I said. It was great fun to tease Drina, when she wasn't weeping.

'Now, Bobby-dear, dear, dear Bobby." I got out the fly. It was a Cricket, a counterpart of my own.

"Drina," I exclaimed, "why did you use this? You always insisted that Cupid would never rise to a Cricket."

CARE for its rollingstock, the railroad creates two distinct functions of its business. Its tracks, tunnels, bridges, all the care of its permanent way comes under the control of the Maintenance Way Department. Similarly, the Mechanical Department assumes control of the cars and engines, sees to it that these are maintained to their fullest efficiency, both by care in daily service and by certain visits to the shops at regular intervals, for repairs, reconstruction and repainting.

To do all of this requires a large plant, both in buildings and machinery. It is distributed at every important point along the railroad. At terminal and operating points, roundhouse facilities of greater or less extent are sure to be located, and at the headquarters of each division these are generally expanded into shops for the making of light repairs and to avoid handling crippled equipment for any great distance. One large shop plant is apt to suffice the average railroad for the heavy repair work. If the road stretch to any extraordinary length, even this feature is apt to be duplicated in order to concentrate this repair work as far as possible.

All this concerns the care and repairs of the locomotives-which the railroader quickly groups under the title of "motive power." To care for the engines while they are in use out upon the line, to see to it that engineers and firemen alike handle these mechanisms with economy and skill is a responsibility that is placed upon the road foreman of engines of each division. He has supervision over smaller roundhouses, but at any of the larger of these structures there is a roundhouse foreman

in direct charge. The railroad long ago learned that its best economy rested in having a plenty of executive control. That has come to be one of the maxims of the business.

There is a master mechanic in charge of the division shops, and in many cases he has authority over the road foreman of engines and the roundhouse foreman. Then under him he has his various assistants, forming a working force not at all unlike that of the average iron working shop. All of this organism is gathered together under a superintendent of motive power, who, in turn, may report to a general mechanical superintendent. This official answers only to the general manager, or, in some cases, to a vice-president to whom these functions of the care of the railroad are delegated.

CARING FOR THE CARS

The

So much for the motive power. railroad has many more units in the forms of its many sorts of cars. These reach an For the freight

almost unending variety. service there are sure to be box cars for merchandise that must be protected from weather conditions, refrigerator cars requiring frequent icing for perishable freight, live-stock cars, tank cars, gondolas for ores, for coal and for coke, flat cars for coarse and bulky freight; the list runs nearly as long as that of the classifications of the freight itself. In the passenger equipment there must be daycoaches and smoking cars-these of varying types for suburban, accommodation or through service-baggage cars, postal cars; on some railroads, parlor and sleeping cars. You get an idea of the railroad's equipment when you hear one of the big Eastern

presidents tell you that the rolling-stock of his line, placed end to end tightly together, would extend from New York to Friend, Nebraska, a distance of 1,483 miles. To make this long line would be gathered together the 4,668 locomotives, the 4,090 passenger cars, and after these the 199,213 freight cars that go to make the rollingstock of this particular system. freight car mileage of this one railroad alone is equal to more than one hundred and eighty-three trips around the world. every twenty-four hours. When you consider the immensity of a big American railroad you can begin to see what it must demand in the form of shop facilities.

The

To return to the proposition of the cars. It is generally treated quite separate from that of the locomotives, and separate shops under the direction of a master car builder, and his assistants are located at a few points upon the system, where they may be of fairly easy access. Rough repairs the car builders term these "light" repairs to cars are made at each division yard. This work is almost entirely confined to the freight equipment, and a good part of it goes upon "foreign" cars-cars

that do not belong at all to the railroad making the repairs.

This feature of the repair work is a direct result of the elaborate system of interchange in freight equipment upon American railroads, in order to prevent the breaking of bulk in the shipment of merchandise from one line to another. Cars will break down when they are many hundreds of miles away from home, and the railroad upon which they are operating at the time, carts them to the nearest temporary repair yard or to its own shops, makes the necessary repairs and charges for them in accordance with a scale prepared by a national association of master car builders. This necessitates a vast deal of bookkeeping, and is only one of the many complications brought about by our extensive plan of railroading in America.

The railroad will probably build the greater part of its freight equipment, although in these days of the supplanting of wood by steel in car construction, the companies are apt to stand appalled at the cost of the steel-working machinery, and to buy their cars direct from the manufacturers very much as they purchase their

locomotives. Passenger equipment is almost invariably secured in this way. It is a big railroad indeed that seeks to-day to construct for itself the huge traveling palaces that the passenger of to-day has come to demand for his comfort. The repair work and the painting of these elaborate vehicles is enough of a proposition in itself.

THE ROUNDHOUSE

To begin at the beginning, one first observes the mechanical department as it comes into constant contact with the operation of the railroad. This is the more quickly observed at the roundhouse -those great, sprawling, circular structures that are a feature of the railroad section of

every important town In England the "engine sheds," as they are known, are simple enough structures, housing a series of parallel tracks, which are served by either a transfer table or switches. Such

a plan is only pursued in this country where space is at a premium-as in the heart of some great city where realty is exceedingly

high-priced for the heads of our railroads have held tenaciously to the easily operated turntable and roundhouse scheme. The table, generally driven by electricity or a small dummy engine, forms the center, the roundhouse a segment or the entire rim of the wheel. The great advantage of its simple design lies in the fact that it is instantly possible to get at any one of the fifty or more locomotives that it houses. It is this feature that has endeared it to the railroad men for many years.

The locomotive that hauls the train goes to its "stall" in the roundhouse directly that its work is done. Its crew, having finished their run, desert it for the time being, and it comes within the charge of the roundhouse foreman and his "hostlers" -these old terms reminiscent of the days when the roundhouse was a real stable and its denizens flesh and blood horses. Now the denizens of the roundhouse are iron horses, and in their great size as they rest within their house are indicative of the progress that has gone ahead in the design and construction of railroad equipment. On the way to the roundhouse, possibly