Page:Fagan (1908) Confessions of a railroad signalman.djvu/139

Rh manager or from anybody connected with the management of railroads. My incentive and encouragement have proceeded in an entirely different way. Some people are content to stand on their little pedestals and watch the world go round. The energies and thoughts of quite a number are absorbed in the climbing of pay-rolls. Others, again, have sensibilities that must be attended to. These touches of nature should be cultivated. As the world runs to-day, “business from the start means, only too often, business to the finish.” I do not think that the American people, the great business community, at any rate, realizes either the nature or the extent of these distressing accidents with sufficient acuteness. In the rush of affairs, sensibility runs the risk of getting smothered. There is a tendency to call upon money and machinery to accomplish everything.

Finally, let me add that, apart from my opinions on this railroad situation, or perhaps in spite of them, I am the heartiest kind of an optimist. At the present day, such splendid possibilities are latent in every sphere of thought and action that one almost trembles at the contemplation of them. Even now, as it seems to me, every man in his little world may be something of a Prospero, for every righteous thought is a winged Ariel on highest mission.