Page:The Black Cat v01no07 (1896-04).pdf/12



OLITARIA will be found indicated on the map by a circle half as large as that which represents Chicago. That is Solitaria as it is advertised. In reality it consists of a side-track and watering tank on the Great Western Railroad, and a little wooden box opposite, courteously called a station, which is inhabited by a man whose aim in life is to watch the side-track and telegraph along the line how it is occupied at various hours of the day and night. Just to the east the Great Western makes its only distinct curve for miles through a little piece of woods. To the west it stretches straight across the face of Indiana, mottled with a million half-burned stumps, and cut into big squares by incalculable miles of rail fence.

The man at Solitaria got to thinking it over—he had a great deal of time to do this—and he made up his mind that matters were going all wrong. In the first place, he thought he ought to be allowed more than twenty-five dollars a month for his services, and that, considering he had been running Solitaria alone for fifteen years, they ought to give him an assistant to talk to—to talk to and to allow him an occasional chance to sleep. These were, of course, entirely personal matters. But finally he made up his mind the whole thing was run wrong. It stood to reason; they never gave it any rest. Day after day and night after night they had sent freight trains and express trains, and express trains and freight trains chasing each other along the road till they had got it so it was all going to break down pretty soon,—the road, and the cars, and the men, and he himself—especially he himself; he saw that plainly. They were all going to stop short, one of these days, and fly to pieces.

Now, take himself, for instance : was it right that they should have kept running their trains hy his door twenty-four hours 10