Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/32

16 of steam had in this engine been supplemented by hydraulic pneumatic and electric appliances of every description. I am not engineer enough to explain, nor would my children care to hear, how these wonderful appliances performed their respective functions; how the supplies of water, coal, and oil were conveyed to the several parts of the machine at the precise time and quantity required, by what ingenious mechanism defective bolts were replaced, loose nuts tightened, choked tubes cleared, and furred boilers cleansed; all I can say is that all this apparatus and much more was there. After all this particular engine was but little superior to many in the sheds, though doubtless it did possess a completer equipment of subsidiary appliances than any previously designed.

It might indeed have been imagined that a country bred child, or a savage, upon seeing for the first time this monster of stellsteel [sic] and brass in active operation would have been scared into supposing it to be the incarnation of the Evil One, or at best some deadly ogre or fury. But these men were neither children nor savages; the engine was their own handiwork,