Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/112

 did we not know that he could reach up his other hand and blow the splendid whistle if he happened to feel like it?

After the locomotive came the closed and mysterious box-cars, important with big numbers and initials in cabalistic sequence, indicating a wide and exciting range of travels. Then came stock cars, from between the slats of which strange and envied cattle looked out on their way to a wondrous city; and there was a car of squealing pigs, who seemed not to want to ride on a real train; and some cars of sheep that were stupidly indifferent about the whole thing. At the last was a palatial "caboose," and toward this, over the tops of the moving cars, a happy brakeman made his exciting progress, not having to hold on, or anything. He casually waved an arm at us, a salute that one of our number, in acknowledging, sought to imitate, for the cool, indifferent flourish of its arm, as if it were a common enough thing for us to be noticed by the mighty from their eminences.

This was my namesake's most beautiful of butterflies. Any one could understand that. As the train lost itself in smoke I knew well what he felt. I knew that that smoke of soft coal was so delicious, so wonderful of portent in his nostrils, that throughout his life it would bring up the wander-bidding in him—always a strange sweet passion of starting. Even now the journey-wonder was in his eyes. I knew that he saw himself jauntily stepping the perilous tops of cars, clad in a coat of padded shoulders bound